What You Wish For
by Candyland
Summary: Poor Ran. All she wished for was to be closer to Shinichi, just for a day. Well, she got her wish...but something tells me this wasn't what she had in mind! SxR
1. Star Light, Star Bright

**AN: **…well, I did it. I actually did it. I wrote this. Ever had that thing happen, where a semi-silly idea bounces around for a while before suddenly grabbing you by the front of the shirt and DEMANDING to be written immediately? …yeah, me neither. This one was planned _:grin:  
_

This is a silly fic. It's supposed to be. It was inspired by a conversation with my sister, and further egged on by my two pals and muses, **Fred the Mutant Pickle** and **Foxie**. Furthermore, I'd been thinking that I wanted to take a stab at writing an original (I hope!) take on a very clichéd idea in this fandom.

So here we go—the prologue of sorts! I no ownie da show. It sucks to be me.

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**Star Light, Star Bright...  
**

"Goodnight, Conan-kun!" Ran said cheerily, having just tucked the aforementioned seven-year-old into bed. He had resisted, as all children did when bedtime rolled around, but as usual, he acquiesced without too much of a struggle, and allowed himself to be ushered through the nightly ritual of tooth-brushing, face-washing, and tucking-in-ing.

"Goodnight!" Conan chirped back at her, snuggling under the covers. The door closed, and the room fell into partial darkness.

But once he was alone, the Conan-mask dropped, and Shinichi came through in the young boy's eyes—older, more tired. He sighed, and rolled off his futon, crawling over to the window. It was a lovely evening, clear and cool, with a healthy number of stars dotting the skies around a full moon. A romantic kind of night. A night for lovers.

Like something out of a bad romance fan fiction, really…

It had actually been a good day, all things considered. He'd managed to shake his pint-sized entourage for a while, though Haibara had been particularly evil today and had gotten Ayumi to all but glue herself to his arm, earning angry and reproachful glares from the other two boys. But once alone, he'd managed to sneak away and give Ran a call. They had a great conversation, aside from the yelling about when he was coming back and the one time when she insinuated that his parents had never been married—but she was always a mood-lifter for him.

His own personal Prozac!

But now here he was, alone. The girl he loved was on the other side of the wall, and he couldn't be with her. It was a lonely togetherness, and he was one of so very few who knew about it.

His melancholy thoughts were interrupted as he glanced aimlessly back at the sky, just in time to see a shooting star rocket by. He traced its path with his eyes, and smiled. "That was nice…" Then he sighed again and turned away from the window. "I wonder if Ran and I will ever be really together…"

A huge yawn split his face then as he suddenly became very sleepy, and he gave up the struggle for independent thought, deciding instead to take to his bed and try to get some sleep, and hope that the Magical Hormone Fairies would not invade his dreams…again.

Unbeknownst to Shinichi, however, he was not the only one who had seen the shooting star.

And wheels were being set in motion…

_o_

_o_

Ran lay on her stomach in bed, her elbows propped up on the mattress and her chin resting comfortably in her hands. She was watching the stars, absentmindedly sighing every few seconds. Her thoughts were on Shinichi, Shinichi, Shinichi.

This should surprise no one.

She'd talked to him earlier that day. His phone calls were a rare treat, but they always felt so short, with long pauses that said far more than any words could. She wondered briefly if he was all right—not because she was particularly concerned or anything, of course, but God knew the man was incapable of taking care of himself! But hearing his voice over the phone…it always made her realize just how much she missed him, and how long he had been gone.

Her eyes had absently dropped to a photo of the two of them on her nightstand. She smiled fondly at the memory before turning her eyes back to the sky—just in time to see a shooting star go whizzing in an arc across the heavens.

She smiled and sighed. Shooting stars were good luck, so she should make a wish.

"I wish…" she whispered out loud, pausing for a moment, "I wish I could be closer to Shinichi. Even if it's just for a day, I wish we could be together again." The night gave her no answers.

Suddenly, Ran felt very drowsy—odd, considering that up until that second, she had been wide awake. And she wanted to think about Shinichi more before going to bed. She struggled to stay awake for a minute before surrendering and letting her head slump forward. She was asleep seconds after her head touched the pillow.

In fact, Ran zonked out so quickly that she didn't have a chance to notice the strange purple mist floating in through her bedroom window, hovering over her, surrounding her…

It was just a wish. An innocent wish.

But shooting stars can be whimsical, and wishes are such tricky things. And besides, somebody up there really likes to play around with Shinichi Kudo's life. And so an innocent bystander, making an innocent wish on an innocent shooting star, became part of a big, hilarious, not-so-innocent cosmic joke.

_o_

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**AN: **And so it begins…I look forward to this one. This was a set-up chapter, folks. A prologue. A teaser, if you will. I'm still finalizing this outline, so it might be a bit before the next chapter, but I really wanted to get this started. So feel free to tell me what you think of my prologue—what little there is of it _:grin:  
_

**NEXT CHAPTER: **When the sun rises, the actual implications of Ran's wish are realized, and it will not be pretty. Something tells me that this really isn't what she had in mind…oh yeah, and Heiji will be in this story. I hope you'll come back and check it out!


	2. First Star I See Tonight

**AN: **Wow, yay for good reviews! You guys and gals are all totally amazing, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart! Truthfully, I'm a little nervous now. Everyone has such high expectations…I hope I can measure up to what you expect of me! A reminder that THIS IS A SILLY FIC. Any OOC-ness…really doesn't bother me. No ownie the characters—merely borrowing.

**Kudos **(not Kudo) **to Fred the Mutant Pickle for beta-ing and putting up with my constant pestering as to whether or not its actually any good, and my constant worrying about the outline that doesn't want to fit together the way I want it to.**

**RANDOM QUESTION OF EVIL: **Okay, many of you out there probably know that in the dub, Shinichi's name is Jimmy. Well, my friend Kat and I have been debating this like mad—do we think that Jimmy is his given name, or a nickname, 'cause I usually think of Jimmy as a nickname for James or something. So is his real dub name James Kudo or something? Yes, these are the kinds of thoughts that occupy me when I'm on RA duty at two in the morning. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this!

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**First Star I See Tonight  
**

Ran's first thought, upon waking up, was that something wasn't quite right. Before she even opened her eyes, she knew that something was different than it had been before. And for a long moment, she was a bit hesitant to even open her eyes and find out what it was.

It wasn't that she felt _bad_, necessarily. It was just that there was _some_ little nagging feeling that _something_, some as-yet unknown detail had changed during the course of the night, and _something_ told her that she was not going to like whatever that _something_ was.

She opened her eyes, feeling a little nervous and a lot silly.

The ceiling was different. Oddity number one.

A strange, almost inhuman grinding noise was invading her ears. Weirdness numero dos.

And there was just a general disoriented feeling that permeated her senses. It was most unsettling.

She sat up, and the feeling intensified, and she fell right back over again. The second time she tried to get up, though, she was a bit more successful, and even managed to stagger to her feet. It was then that she noticed something even more strange.

She was…short.

And she then noticed the source of the grating sound that had first sent her eardrums a-ringing.

Tentative fingers ran up to her face, sliding over features that were not the same ones she'd had when she had gone to bed the previous night. Now reaching a level of utter panic, she clambered to her feet and tried to sprint out of the room; her feet tangled in the bedclothes, and she ended up face-down on the floor. Now panicked AND nursing a sore nose, she scooted out of the room and into the bathroom.

It was then that she realized—for the second time in as many minutes—that she was far shorter than she had been the night before. She was missing some _major_ height—her forehead barely reached the top of the sink. A quick search of the bathroom produced the stepstool Conan used for such simple activities as looking in the mirror.

Thus aided by the stepstool, she was pleased to discover that she could actually see over the sink and into the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her. And both of them—her and her reflection—lost their lower jaws in perfection unison.

She was…

The face…

That wasn't her face.

It was…not the reflection of a seventeen-year-old girl.

Ran stared.

The reflection stared back.

She blinked.

She shook her head.

She slapped her hands to the sides of her face.

She smacked herself in the forehead.

But the face remained the same.

And it was definitely not the reflection of a seventeen-year-old girl…

_o_

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Conan (aka Shinichi) opened his eyes when he heard a scream from down the hall, vaguely remembering dreams of a strange purple mist that seemed to determined to swallow him whole.

His first thought was that there was something wrong with someone else.

His second thought was that something was wrong with _him_.

This, because he felt…strange. It took a moment to shake off the drowsy haze and try to take a quick account of himself before he decided that the source of the noise was more important. Now thoroughly disoriented and confused, he crawled out of bed and headed towards the door with every intent of investigating the scream.

He fell over promptly and without ceremony or pretense.

Now face-down on the floor, he tried to steady his spinning head, and climbed back to his feet, rubbing his aching nose. He wobbled a bit, but managed to stay upright. He was insanely out of sorts, and he had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

And somehow, Ran was at the middle of it.

Therefore, the scream had made him even more nervous, even though it hadn't sounded anything like Ran.

And so he headed for the door, to investigate the scream, hoping that nothing was seriously wrong.

But he made the mistake of glancing at the mirror as he passed by, and froze, completely forgetting about the shriek that had woken him up. A more pressing matter had presented itself to him.

The face that looked back…

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Ran clasped her hands over her mouth to stifle any further screams.

In the mirror reflection, _Conan_ did the same.

_Conan's_ face.

She ran tentative, shaky fingers over her face, constantly blinking and hoping that the image would clear, that it was some bizarro dream and she would wake up and be herself again. But no, Conan's blue eyes and childish features remained firmly in place.

Her mind was racing a mile a minute, most of it incoherent babble. But somehow, she stumbled from the bathroom (nearly tumbling headfirst from the stool in the process) and back to the bed she'd woken up in—a futon on the floor of her father's room.

The inhuman grinding sound? Her father's snores.

She crawled back under the covers, not quite sure where else to go.

"It has to be a dream…" she murmured to herself, trying very hard not to fully panic. "It must be a dream…" But with each passing repetition of her mantra, she knew that it was, in fact, _not_ a dream. She had somehow gotten trapped in Conan's body. But what to do, what to do…

A sudden realization hit her: if she was here, then someone else had to be stuck in her body. And given her circumstances, that someone was most likely Conan. For whatever reason, they'd been switched, and the poor boy was probably terrified. So she made the decision that she would remain as calm as possible, if only for the sake of her young charge.

Even though she felt like curling up into a ball and screaming her head off, consequences be hanged.

She made another decision then, as well. Glancing over at her father, she realized that he would NOT take this news well. Best not to tell him right off the bat until she herself had some handle as to what was going on. So she decided to act as much like Conan as she could until further notice.

Ran realized then that she was missing one of Conan's most obvious traits—his glasses…but if that was the case, then why in the world could she see perfectly? Maybe…maybe she was seeing things as she usually saw them? That didn't make much sense…but neither did switching bodies.

A quick search produced the glasses by the pillow, and she slipped them onto her nose…only to find that her vision didn't change. The glasses were…fake? _Whiskey tango foxtrot?_

She slipped them off her nose for further examination. But she must have touched something because an antennae appeared, shooting out of the frames. What looked like a tiny tracker appeared on one of the lenses. Ran stared blankly at this new development.

Feeling pole-axed was getting to be an unpleasantly regular occurrence.

Another press of the nearly-invisible button made the oddity go away, and she slid the specs onto her nose, at a loss for what else to do. She sat there for a moment, pondering. Why in the world would Conan have something like that?

Come to think of it, he seemed to have an awful lot of unusual toys laying around. He always said that Agasa-hakase made them for him. She'd never really given it much thought before.

Looking around blankly, she noticed Conan's bowtie sitting on the floor. She absently picked it up and began twirling it around her fingers. It was then that she noticed _another_ strangeness.

There was some sort of mechanism on the back of the bowtie.

Making a quick decision, she slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could. Once safely out of her father's earshot (not that he could have heard anything over his insanely loud snoring), she took a closer look at the strange mechanical contraption that graced the back of Conan's fashion-esque trademark.

There were a couple of dials, and something that looked like a speaker or a microphone. All nestled on the back of the bowtie, completely invisible from the front. She flipped it over, studying it carefully, then sighed.

"Well, this is weird…" she murmured, then jumped a mile when _Shinichi's_ voice came out the other side of the bowtie. As she stared at the fashionable (_snicker_) object questioningly, a few things fell painfully into place, like a Plinko chip landing right in the big money spot.

Conan's bowtie was spouting Shinichi's voice.

Shinichi had called her yesterday.

So one of two things was going on. Either Conan was calling her as Shinichi to make her feel better—which was an oddly conflicting thought, because she wasn't sure if she should be angry or flattered by the action. Or…option B.

Gripping the bowtie in one hand, and the glasses in the other, Ran headed down the hall towards her own room, not quite sure what she was going to find there.

_o_

_o_

Long brown hair, a bit frizzed from prolonged contact with a pillow.

Blue eyes that were now wide awake and almost frightened.

Teenaged height that allowed him to actually _see _into the mirror without the aide of a ladder.

And a few certain anatomical parts—of the female persuasion, no less—that Shinichi certainly hadn't had when he'd gone to bed the previous evening.

In short, uh-oh.

Needless to say, Shinichi Kudo was really freaked out.

I mean, wouldn't you be a little weirded out if you woke up and looked in the mirror and saw your best friend's face staring back at you? Your _female_ best friend, no less? You certainly would, wouldn't you.

Shinichi's mind, so well-trained in logic, was going like a bullet train. But even as brilliant as he was, even as awesome as he was when it came to piecing together the most baffling of puzzles, he was absolutely perplexed as to how in the world he had wound up in Ran's body.

And every time he thought about it, he resolved to come up with a different way of saying that, because it just sounded so wrong to him. Bad, bad, bad…

And slowly, the idea that they'd been switched kind of faded into the fact that he was actually in Ran's body (bad!). It was a decidedly new experience, especially when he tried to fold his arms across his chest to think, and found, ahem, obstacles in his way preventing him from comfortably doing so.

Another thought occurred to him—if he was looking through Ran's eyes right now, then where was Ran. Oh, duh. She was probably…oh dear. This was not good. Not good at all.

But still…Ran…

She felt nice…

Soft…

In pajamas…

_No! Naughty!_ he berated himself, lightly smacking himself in the forehead.

"Problem?"

A painfully familiar soprano voice asked from the doorway. He whirled, belated pushing a few stray locks of long hair from his (her?) eyes as he regarded the speaker with a certain degree of carefully concealed panic.

Conan stared back, blue eyes absolutely frigid.

That was especially freaky, Shinichi realized. An actual out-of-body experience. He was staring himself in the eye…and damned if he didn't look absolutely menacing at the moment!

Swallowing hard, he ventured (in her voice), "…Ran?"

The small figure in the doorway nodded. Then his (or rather, her) expression turned angry, and she held up two items: a familiar pair of glasses, and an equally familiar bowtie. She raised the bowtie to the level of her mouth and said, "Shinichi?" His own true voice came out the other side.

Shinichi Kudo froze. He didn't even have the presence of mind to deny the accusation, especially not when she had finally found the proof she had always lacked when making her previous allegations. He proceeded to do a perfect imitation of a hooked fish.

Her expression grew dark, and her fists clenched. Both bad signs.

He started to sweat.

Not only had they somehow switched, but he had just been caught, and he didn't have the wits left about him to try and derail her suspicions. His thoughts were running in circles like little panicked squirrels, and they basically repeated the same phrase over and over: _Oh SHIT I'm SCREWED she'll KILL ME DEAD and I can't GET AWAY and DOOM DOOM DOOOOOOOOOM…doom…_

_o_

_o_

In spite of his best efforts to ignore the dreaded ringing sound, the telephone wouldn't shut up.

Finally, grudgingly, Heiji Hattori rolled over and grabbed the stupid thing off of his nightstand. Blinking owlishly in an attempt to wake up, he put the receiver to his ear. "'lo?"

"Hattori!" a panicked female voice rushed from the other end. "Hattori, it's me!"

"Neechan?" the Detective of the West yawned. "I bet you know what time it is, so I'm waitin' for an explanation." He wasn't feeling particularly charitable at the moment, no matter who was calling.

"It's me!"

"…Neechan?" Heiji asked, a bit confused.

"No, Kudo!"

A pause. "Wishful thinking?"

"No, you idiot!" Ran's voice was agitated. "It's me! I'm Kudo!"

Heiji yawned again, wishing he could end this phone call quickly and go back to bed. He was actually supposed to meet Kazuha in an hour so she could drag him shopping (and he had carefully-laid plans to whine through the entire thing, just to make sure the aho knew _exactly_ how big of a sacrifice it was for him), so he figured could easily squeeze in another forty-five minutes' worth of sleep before panicking and going chasing after her at the last minute.

It was their little ritual, really.

"Look, your dad's not the best example to follow. Really. And you shouldn't be drinking anyway," he mumbled, feeling himself start to nod off again. "'specially not this early."

"Hattori, would you listen?" Ran huffed. "Wait…I know. Listen, I'm going to hold the phone by the door so you can hear this." There was the sound of movement, and a noise that had previously been merely a muffled sound in the background now became clearer.

Namely, Conan's voice.

Screaming.

Even muffled as it was (coming through the door, apparently), it was still perfectly plain as to what the pint-sized wonder was shouting. Something about death to…Shinichi? In fact, the death's she seemed to be wishing on him were nothing short of creative. Burny, stabby, shooty…all quite painful.

Heiji was suddenly wide awake as it clicked. "Wait a minute…you're Kudo?"

"Brilliant freakin' deduction!" Ran's voice—apparently with Kudo's mind behind it—said shortly. "Honestly, what did I have to do, sing it for you?" He sounded a bit irritated. "And before you ask, I have absolutely no idea how this happened. I just woke up and I was in Ran's body."

Heiji paused. "That sounds really wrong…"

"I know," Shinichi half-moaned. "But I'm in her room right now. I kinda pushed her out of the room and locked the door. So for the moment, at least, I'm kind of safe. But now she also knows I'm Conan, as you could probably guess from those lovely death threats."

"I'm surprised you had the presence of mind to lock the door," Heiji teased, finally sitting up and perching on the edge of his bed. "First you get shrunk, now you and your girlfriend have managed to switch around, and you still think clearly enough to put distance between you?"

He could almost hear the eye-roll on the other end of the line. "Hattori, if a lion is charging at you at full speed, you're not going to stand there and comment on what a lovely color its coat is while you wait for it to maul you. You're going to run like hell," Kudo said flatly. "Well, the lion is on the other side of the door, and I'm trying to postpone the inevitable mauling for as long as humanly possible." A pause. "And I think we could maybe use some help…" That last was slightly plaintive.

Heiji couldn't keep himself from chuckling. "Read ya loud and clear. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't hafta go to shopping today…" He completely ignored the fact that Kazuha would probably kill him and burn the body, but he didn't care. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was utterly oblivious to it. "I'll call ya when I get there."

"Sounds good."

"So…how long are you going to hide out in there?"

"I don't know," Shinichi looked towards the door, through which he could hear Ran (in Conan's voice) screaming something about the fascinating things that one could do with Nair and some super glue. "I was thinking I'd be in here for a while. Like, until she dies."

"Fair enough. I'm getting up. See you soon."

Heiji hung up first, and Shinichi disconnected his end of the conversation. Then he sighed, and turned his attention back to the mirror. Just when he thought nothing could rattle him…

And Professor Ran's through-the-door lecture on the "Many Uses of Centipedes and Kitchen Cleavers in Causing Extreme Amounts of Pain to Detectives 101" wasn't helping matters much, either.

Death was three feet tall…

_o_

_o_

Shinichi sat, perched on the edge of the bed. He felt really strange looking down at his knees and seeing pale pink pajama pants there. He felt even stranger knowing that he was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top that really showed off Ran's…arms.

What, you thought I was going to say something else? Hentai…

In front of him, Ran was pacing a trench in the carpet, small feet parading him back and forth with a regular beat. March, two, three, four, five, six, seven, about-FACE, march the other way, two, three, four, and so forth. She stepped with a precision and sharpness that would have made any drill sergeant proud.

But when she stopped and glared at him, in no way resembling the child she was at the moment, Shinichi actually shrank into himself. Even at that height, the top of her head not even brushing his waist, she could intimidate him like no one else.

"Shinichi…" she said finally, in a tone that did not allow for arguments or protests, "you have approximately thirty seconds to explain to me what the HELL is going on, or so help me God, I will break your knee-caps…" She paused then. "Except…then I'd be breaking my knee-caps…" Her expression faded momentarily into bewilderment. "Now I'm confused…but that's beside the point!" Blue eyes flared again. "YOU ARE GOING TO START TALKING OR I SWEAR BY ALL THAT IS HOLY—"

"What's going on?"

Both of them jumped at the growl that interrupted their conversation. They whirled to see Kogoro Mouri standing in the doorway, looking every inch a relative of Bigfoot. And his murderous glare was directed specifically at the small child in front of him.

Ran visibly froze.

Shinichi hesitated, then jumped up, trying his damndest to act like he thought Ran would. "Sorry, Dad. Conan had a bad dream, and he woke me up. Surprised me." He put her most charming smile on his face and hoped to God that The Idiot's state of non-wakefulness would cover for the fact that his hands were shaking AND that "Conan" was trembling from head to toe.

For several heartbeats, the room was still.

Then Mouri groaned something that sounded suspiciously like, "Breakfast..." and headed down the stairs towards his first morning beer. His feet thudded heavily on the stairs; they listened intently as he padded down to the landing and opened the door to his office, and then the click as the door closed behind him.

Slowly, they both turned and looked at each other, wide-eyed and nervous.

Ran's eyes narrowed angrily in Conan's face. Now, instead of yelling, she started hissing at him, venom in every word. "Well? Start talking. Now. You are in such deep kimchi right now—"

"Look," Shinichi's own temper finally started to rise, and he leaned over and hissed right back at her, "I can understand why you're so pissed off, but hasn't it occurred to you that you're not giving me a CHANCE to explain? And furthermore," his eyes slid towards the open door and the frown-lines on his forehead deepened, "your father is NOT the most understanding person in the world. I would rather he NOT find out about this little…development."

Ran glared from her shorter stature.

Shinichi straightened up to full height and put his hands on his hips in a nearly-flawless imitation of Ran at her most imposing, the pose she often assumed just before someone's head would be forcibly knocked from their shoulders via kick-ass karate. "So here's what I think we need to do. We can go to Agasa's place. It's safe, and we can talk there without anyone who's not supposed to know overhearing anything. You can yell at me there. Okay?"

For a moment, he was pretty sure that his kneecaps were going to get smashed beyond repair.

But to his slight surprise, she folded her arms and nodded. "Fine. Fair enough. Truce until we get to Agasa's—" The penny dropped, and her eyes flashed again, "Wait a minute…Agasa-hakase knows, too?" Her infamous temper flared, "AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DID—MMPH!"

That last was cut off as Shinichi lunged and clapped a hand over her mouth when her volume started to rise. She continued to scream against his hand; most of what she said was fair-well unprintable, and at one point, he had to bite his tongue to keep from interjecting that she could leave his mother out of this and yes, his parents _had_ been married, thank you very much!

Finally, she calmed down and sighed. "We'll yell at each other later. Let's just get dressed, and…"

A pregnant pause hit as the full implications of _getting dressed _smacked them both upside the head. With a hammer. Both faces simultaneously flared to the point of spontaneous combustion.

Ran recovered first, and stormed around the room, making a stop at the closet and the dresser (though Shinichi had to move her desk chair over so she could actually reach the drawers); she then shoved the resulting bundle of clothes into Shinchi's arms with far more force than her little hands should have been able to muster up. "Here. Wear this," she growled. "I'm going to go change. I can manage on my own. And I promise you, Shinichi—If. You. Look. You. DIE."

And she stormed out of the room, leaving the poor boy-now-girl to figure out exactly how one was supposed to get dressed without looking…especially when one had never before had to venture into the wonderful world that was the modern brassiere.

He looked down at the clothing in his arms. Something white and lacy peeked out at him from under the dark red sweatshirt she'd chosen. Shinichi swallowed hard, and closed his eyes.

This was going to be tricky…

_o_

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_o_

**AN:** And here we have it. Now we're cooking with gas, that little blue flame! Surprised? Essentially, I was trying to come up with a unique way for Ran to find out about Conan/Shinichi, as well as putting a slightly different spin on the whole 'Ran gets chibi-fied' angle. They've both been done pretty hard in this fandom, so I wanted to see if a different angle might work. Hopefully, this will at least amuse y'all.

Now that we've got the set-up, the wacky hijinks may begin in earnest…when I find time to write. See, school is starting up, and Aunty Candy-chan has the Schedule from HELL, and the Homework Load of DOOM, and the Non-Existent Sleep Pattern of EVIL. As you can probably guess, my time is valuable, and school is my priority. Plus, I went back and looked at my outline, and there are a couple of things that still need tweak-age. So bear with me, I'm working on it! I appreciate your wonderful patience with me while I whine about Music Methods, the Class of NOT GOOD!

**NEXT CHAPTER: **The day continues. Full Disclosure abounds, and it might be tough keeping this under wraps, though. After all, some of their friends are veeeeeeeeery persistent. Hope to see you then!

**Candyland Fic Pick**

_Title: _Jaded

_Author: _fireblazie

_Rating: _T

_Genre: _Drama/Angst

_Official Summary: _She was keeping a secret from him. He was pushing her away. All this time, they kept missing each other.. HeijixKazuha.

_Candyland's Comments: _Not too long ago, I was inspired to write a stand-alone Heiji/Kazuha fic. I dedicated it to the person who inspired me to write it, and that was fireblazie and her uber-AWESOME HxK stories. She is a wonderful person who turned around and wrote a fic for lil' ol' me. All her fics are amazing, and this might be her first angst fic, but you will not regret reading it. Promise!


	3. I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

**AN: **…hello? Anybody out there? Yeah, sorry about this. I know I kind of let this fic go while I was doing the 30 Kisses challenge for Shinichi and Ran…but I'm back now! The other half of the problem lies in the outline. It's fighting me. Big time. I kicked it a few times, and it spit up this chapter, though.

So I hope you'll stick with me. This story will not be left to rot in the sizable vault of unfinished ff-dot-net stories! It just might take me a while to get it written. I appreciate your patience in advance. And off we go! I don't own Detective Conan, I just play with the characters for my own amusement.

* * *

**I Wish I May, I Wish I Might**

It took a while, but finally, Shinichi had managed to get dressed. It took a lot longer than it probably should have for a couple of very important reasons.

The primary reason, of course, was that he was stuck in Ran's body. This meant that he had to get dressed _with his eyes closed. _That would have been a bit tricky, even if he was himself. The outfit she'd handed him was simple—jeans, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and…undergarments—but it just wasn't something he was used to doing, so it was tricky.

More importantly, though, was the other big problem that had reared its ugly head. As was common with men of his age and, ah, experience, the bra had proved a bit challenging. Especially the clasp. Especially when he had to _keep his eyes closed._

But nevertheless, he was proud to say that he'd gotten dressed without peeking.

…much.

Give the boy a break—a seventeen-year-old boy in the body of an attractive seventeen-year-old girl? Specifically, the girl he liked? Wouldn't you look? Of course you would. And of course he felt appropriately guilty immediately afterwards. So stop judging him, don't tell Ran, and let's continue with the story. This has been a public service announcement.

When he came out into the office, the other party involved was already waiting for him, dressed in jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt of his—or her—own. Conan's blue eyes looked him up and down with all the force of Ran's angry--critical--gaze behind them.

"Not bad," she said with a nod. As with many teenage girls, she was the worst critic of her own looks. "Answer me honestly—did you look?" At his frantic head-shake, she narrowed her eyes. "Good. Because if you did, I would kill you. Now come here."

Shinichi blinked. "What?"

"Come here and sit down," Ran ordered. He obliged, and she hopped off the sofa and sprinted out of the room, calling back over her shoulder, "Don't move! I'll be right back!" Patiently, nervously, he waited for her return.

When she reappeared, she had a hairbrush in her hand. "We're going to fix this first," she said breezily, climbing up behind him. "Then we'll go to Agasa-hakase's, and you can give me a reason not to strangle you in your sleep." Without further explanation, she applied the hairbrush to her own hair, in her quest to vanquish any and all flyaways.

Shinichi sat quietly, not daring to complain, even when she hit a tangle and pulled. He just let Ran fix her hair—though it presently hung from his head—and wondered how long it would take.Girls could be awfully fussy about their hair and appearances, he knew that from watching Ran get ready for this and that...

But actually, he realized slowly, it felt kind of nice. He'd always wondered why girls liked having their hair played with so much, and he was finally getting the picture. It felt strangely pleasant to feel someone else's fingers sliding through his hair, brushing against his scalp…it shouldn't feel that good, but it really did...

He didn't realize he'd made a sound—or even closed his eyes—until Ran paused in her gentle ministrations. "Shinichi," she said softly, so as not to attract her father's attention, "did you just purr?"

Shinichi swallowed hard, his eyes snapping open. "N-no…" he protested.

Ran resumed her work on her hair. Shinichi paid a little better attention to himself. For starters, his eyes slid closed almost immediately, wholly of their own volition. And he was startled to hear a low rumbling sound emit from deep in his chest (or rather, it was Ran's chest, and that made him blush to think about). It _did_ sound like a purr. It escaped without his permission.

She stopped again, and he bit back a whine. "You _did_ purr! I knew it!" she said triumphantly…and then she giggled. "So I guess you like me playing with your hair, hmm? You're just like a cat, I swear." As she teased, she began brushing again. Amusing or no, it was her hair, and she demanded it to look nice.

"No, I…okay, maybe…" he admitted, the denial dropping off as she went back to work. It really shouldn't feel this nice, but it did. And furthermore…it was entrusting a highly-noticeable part of one's appearance to another person, a human being fully capable of making mistakes, even if it was a person he cared for a greta deal. It still felt so pleasant. Close. He would almost say _intimate_. Giving up, he leaned back a little bit and just let himself enjoy the feel of it. Behind him, he heard the world's smallest beautician chuckling at his behavior; he had the decency to blush.

Far too soon (for his tastes, anyway), Ran set the brush down. "There, you're done," she said cheerily, brushing her hands together to clean them of invisible dust. When he turned around, she gave...well, herself another once-over with a critical eye. "That'll do, that'll do. Not bad on short notice." She hopped off the sofa. "Let's get going."

He stood up (without whining) and followed her out the door and down the stairs. As he called out in her voice to tell Mouri that they were going out for a while (and ignoring his shouts that she wasn't going anywhere because he hadn't been fed yet), Shinichi made a note to ask Ran if he could play with her hair sometime…

_**-o-**_

On the sidewalk, the tension started to grow again. This happened when Ran instinctively reached for his hand…only to realize that he now had a good amount of height on her. If anyone was going to be leading anyone else around by the hand, it was going to be him.

Ran swallowed hard. "Do I have to…"

"No!" he said quickly. "I won't make you! I mean, unless you want to…" It was then that he made another observation—girls blushed a lot more easily--or maybe it was just Ran, he wasn't sure. Either way, though, his face felt hot, which meant that it was probably red. Conan's eyes looked up at him warily, but then turned straight ahead, and the walk began. Both kept their hands snugly in their pockets. Shinichi was silently disappointed.

Still, Ran couldn't keep quiet for very long, and finally, she glanced up at him again. "So _were _you ever going to tell me about this, Shinichi?" she growled, her anger rising again. She hadn't gotten an explanation yet, and as such, she had no reason yet to not be angry.

"We'll talk when we get there!" he hissed back. It wasn't a long walk to the doctor's home, but he had a feeling it was going to feel a good deal longer than it actually was. "Please! You can yell at me as much as you want when we get to Agasa's!"

"I want to know now!" she whispered back.

"I don't want to make a scene!" he snapped.

"I want to know why I let you breathe!"

"I don't want the entire world to know exactly how screwed up things are around here!"

This continued the entire way back to Agasa's home—angry hissing and whispering, though they did manage to keep their voices down for the most part, and managed to not attract too many unwanted eyes. Even as they pushed open the gate and made their way up the sidewalk to the front door, the furious (but whispered) denials, demands, and disclaimers continued, right up until they rang the doorbell.

The door opened, and Ai Haibara appeared. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she saw their facial expressions, she faltered for a moment. "Is…something wrong?" she finally settled on the neutral question, already knowing the answer would be affirmative.

"Hi," Conan growled. "Can we come in?"

Recognizing the question for the order that it was, she stepped aside and let the pair in. As she closed the door behind them, a sly smirk slid across her face. Something was very wrong here, and she had a feeling she was about to find out exactly what it was.

It didn't help matters any that Ai was just feeling evil today.

This was going to be fun…

_**-o-**_

Shinichi sat silently on one of Agasa-hakase's very comfortable couches, eyes downcast, hands folded demurely in his lap, while a very angry, very short Ran screamed at him. He just stared down at his hands while she berated him furiously, and while looking, noticed that Ran had really nice…

…nails.

What, you thought he was looking at her legs or something _else _in the lap area? Hentai.

She'd more or less held herself in check since the revelation of that morning, and kept her temper under tight rein for the duration of their walk to the doctor's home. But now that they were away from the prying glances of the public and in no danger of making a scene to anyone who didn't know them, the gloves were coming off and Ran was letting it all out.

She was screaming about everything she could think of, using every swear word she could think, in every language she could think of—all insulting everything about Shinichi she could come up with on short notice. His personal choices, his family, his ancestry, his intelligence, and his probable destination after death…and more. All were questioned, insulted, or verbally shredded, while still managing some fairly graphic descriptions of her plans for ending his pitiful existence.

And Shinichi sat there silently and took it.

For a while, anyway.

It wasn't until she said something about how she was going to kill him, chop him up, put him in a stew, and feed him to her father that he finally lost his hold on his tongue. "Ran," he interjected suddenly, "much as I'm sure your father would love to know that I was gone for good, that's called cannibalism, and I'm pretty sure it's frowned upon in most societies."

That stopped Ran in mid-sentence, and she fell silent. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides, her eyes squeezed closed, and the red color of her face deepened as she started to shake. For one brief, terrible moment, Shinichi was sure she was going to explode and take the entire building and its occupants with her.

"Tea's ready!" Agasa-hakase said cheerfully. He stepped into the room bearing a tray with cookies and the aforementioned tea. Setting it down on the table, he looked up at the child currently housing Ran's mind. "Ran-kun, I didn't realize you had such a vocabulary!"

The angry mood was dissipated, and Ran had the grace to look a bit sheepish. But she helped herself to a cookie and took a seat; she had to wrestle a little bit to actually get up onto the couch though, but in relatively short order, she was sitting upright. She still looked upset (and now embarrassed to boot), but sighed and went on with as much dignity as possible. "Okay, I feel better now. So can I get a full explanation now, or do I have to figure out exactly how hard this little body can kick?"

"Not very hard. I promise," Shinichi replied, taking a cookie for himself and thinking back to his first case as his smaller self. He'd had it driven home quickly and effectively that he was no longer as effective as he had once been. "As for an explanation…well, get comfortable. It's kind of a long story."

Ran sat back against the couch…and then sat back up. "My feet don't reach the floor…"

"You'll get used to it," he reassured her. "So the story…well, it all started that day at Tropical Land. I'm sure you remember it—when the guy died on the roller coaster?" At her nod, he went on. "And there were those two guys in black there? They're the important ones. And remember, you can't breathe a word of this to anyone. If they find out…"

"I get it, I get it. Top secret," she nodded fervently. For a moment, she really did seem the child she appeared to be, with energy to burn and wide-eyed curiosity, eager to know and understand everything she did not. "Keep going! Tell me!"

He couldn't keep himself from smiling, but went on without comment. "I went after the one guy, that's when I said goodbye to you. And I saw an illegal transaction—from the look of it and what they were saying, the guy with the briefcase of cash was smuggling guns, and the gorilla in the black suit was there on behalf of some people who were blackmailing him about it."

Ran gasped. Gun smuggling wasn't petty crime—that was serious.

"It was then that I made a big mistake. We're talking total rookie here, Ran. I can't believe I was that stupid…" Shinichi sighed. "There were two men in black on the roller coaster. One of them was in front of me. And it didn't occur to me to wonder where the other one was. Didn't even cross my mind." He shook his head as he remembered how badly he'd bungled that night. "Well, as it turned out, he was right behind me. With a pipe or something in his hands. I didn't realize this until he was swinging it at my head."

"Oh my God…" Ran breathed.

"So I'm lying there, sort of conscious," he went on in a rush, "and the Gorilla talks with Blondie about what they're going to do with me." He remembered their voices, cold and harsh, echoing from somewhere up above him. "Or rather, how they're going to kill me."

Ran gasped again. Still in the room, Ai and Agasa-hakase watched and listened silently.

"Gorilla—also known as Vodka—was ready to shoot me," he continued, "but Blondie, henceforth known as Gin, told him not to. There were still a ton of cops around from the roller coaster murder. If they shot me, the police would hear it and come running, and they might be caught. Of course, I would have still been dead, but hey, nobody asked for my opinion." He sighed. "So then Gin pulled out his little magic pill. It was supposedly their syndicate's newest poison—undetectable in an autopsy, and untested on humans. Guess who got to be the lucky first test subject?"

"Oh no…" Ran interjected.

"That's right—lil' ol' me," he said, trying not to remember it: the pill forcing its way between his teeth, followed by a cool rush of water that swept it to the back of his mouth. Instinct had kicked in, and he'd swallowed it…officially ending life as he knew it. "Long story short—"

"Too late," Ai interrupted, the first time she'd spoke since the story began.

"—I swallowed it, and when I woke up, I was…that," he pointed at her, ignoring the commentary from the peanut gallery. "And there were some cops—I didn't know them, they weren't any of Megure's regulars—standing over me, calling me little boy and stuff. I hadn't even realized there was anything wrong yet, but they were saying something about a daycare center or something." He shuddered. "I took off as fast as those little legs would carry me. Still, it wasn't until I saw my reflection in a store window that I realized what had happened."

Ran was simply staring at him, her jaw hanging wide open and her eyes as huge as soccer balls. It was a comical expression to see on Conan's face, really.

"It was really pathetic—I couldn't even reach the lock on the gate to get into my own house," he sighed. "Then Agasa blew out the wall next door with another of his great experiments." He paused to shoot the doctor a grin. "I convinced him who I was and told him what happened. We talked about it, and figured it was best not to tell anyone. Those guys wanted me dead, and sooner or later they were going to realize that my body hadn't been found. So it was agreed that I would lay low for a while. And then…"

He paused long enough for Ran's curiosity to get the better of her. "And then?"

"You showed up," he grinned.

"That's why 'Conan' was hiding behind the desk," she said in belated realization.

"Exactly. We were kind of hoping you wouldn't see me, but…well, obviously you did," he sighed. "Popped the lenses out of Dad's glasses for a really quick disguise. I was sure you were going to recognize me for a minute…and then you hugged me." He grinned cheekily.

Ran flushed angrily, and Shinichi was reminded that he was, in fact, in the hot seat.

"And you know the rest. And that's the story," he finished lamely in a rush. "Should have been the case of a lifetime, and instead, it's a case that I haven't been able to solve yet while I'm running _for_ my life." He paused and looked at her cautiously. "Do you understand, Ran? That's why I didn't tell anyone. I had to hide. If they find me, they'll kill me, and possibly those around me."

She was looking at the floor, obviously mulling over what she had just learned.

"Ran?" he asked, concerned.

"So…you couldn't even tell me?" she said shakily, raising her eyes to meet his; it was extremely disconcerting to be looking oneself in the eye like that, especially when your own eyes were glistening with tears that stalwartly refused to gather as yet. "You didn't trust me to keep your secret? Was this some kind of joke to you?"

"No!" Shinichi was out of his seat and on his knees in front of her in a heartbeat; he had to kneel to be at her eye level. "Ran, no. That's not it at all. I just…" he groped for the right words, "I didn't want you involved. I mean….aw, hell…" He sat back, feeling completely at a loss. "I don't know. It made sense at the time…and I didn't think it was going to take this long." He looked down. "I'm sorry, Ran."

He waited, feeling three pairs of eyes on him. Agasa and Ai continued to watch silently while Ran mulled things over. At this point, it was her call as to what was going to happen next.

"I forgive you."

He had no right to monopolize her life anymore, he was scum, she was—wait, what?

His head snapped back. "Bwuh?" he managed, not quite sure he'd heard right.

"I said I forgive you," she repeated with a half-smile, though something hard remained in her eyes. "Don't get me wrong—I'm still mad at you, and I will be for a very long time. But…" One small hand reached out and touched his cheek, "I guess I understand."

Shinichi's eyes were wide. "Ran…"

"I think we need to have a little chat," she said with a sigh. "Next time you're back to normal, I mean. There's a few things we need to talk about, meitantei."

He nodded. "Yes…Ran, I--"

Ai chose that moment to clink her teacup. Loudly. They jumped apart, feeling incredibly guilty. They'd forgotten that they weren't alone. But the others had been so quiet, just sitting there watching! Agasa was visibly trying to keep from laughing, and that didn't help matters any.

"I do have a question, though…" Ran said, trying to quickly divert attention.

Just as eager to change the subject, Shinichi jumped on that idea. "What's that?"

"You already said that you don't get much of a kick in this little boy. So how in the _hell_ do you rocket a soccer ball like that?" she demanded. Her face was still red, but it was a new topic, dammit!

Shinichi sighed indulgently and took the vacant seat beside her on the couch. "You really do want to know everything, don't you? I don't get to keep any secrets?" He was teasing, and she knew it.

"You're not allowed to have anymore secrets," Ran said firmly. "You forfeit that right."

"Oh, all right," he sighed dramatically. "If you press this button on the shoes…"

_**-o-**_

It was a while later when they left. Ran had a vast new store of knowledge concerning the way that ordinary objects could be manipulated or worked on to conceal valuable tools for the chibified detective. The conversation was considerably lighter now that there had been Full Disclosure, and Ran seemed to be in a much better mood as they headed back out onto the street.

"So you said Hattori-kun's coming?" Ran asked, looking up at…herself. Was she really that tall? Everything seemed so much bigger from this vantage…it was kind of scary, really. How did kids function in a world that towered over them like that? It seemed so frightening!

"He said he'll come to help, but I think it's more of an opportunity to heckle me," Shinichi confided, glancing down at…himself. Was he really that short when he was Conan? Geez! It was nice to be tall again and all, but…wow, he was really a shrimp in Conan-mode!

"So what do we do until he gets here?" she asked, shaking the thoughts away.

"Well, we could—"

"RAAAAAAAN!"

Shinichi froze.

Ran froze.

A stray cat across the street looked up and went, "Mrew?"

Several meters away, Sonoko waved cheerily. "Hey! I was looking for you!" She strolled up to them, not seeming to notice that both 'Shinichi' and 'Ran' were hyperventilating. "Your dad said you came over here. So are we going or what?"

"G-g-going?" 'Ran' stammered. "Going where?" Behind the smile he'd managed to force onto Ran's face, Shinichi was having a full-blown panic attack. _Going where? Going to the gallows, going to the guillotine, going to the seaside and taking a swim in my new cement shoes…where might we be going?_

"Don't you remember?" Sonoko said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Shopping!"

_Scratch that, _Shinichi grimaced internally, fighting to keep it from showing on Ran's face, _it's WORSE than the guillotine. At least THAT would be quick and painless. You could have sent fire, plague, murder, pestilence...instead you sent Sonoko and a shopping trip.  
_

"Unless…you don't want to anymore?" Sonoko added, her smile faltering.

…_Oh, fork me, _Shinichi sighed. Sometimes he hated being a gentleman—it meant not liking it when girls got upset, even if it was Sonoko. "Let's go!" he said in the best cheerful-Ran voice he could muster up when faced with such imminent doom. "I guess it just slipped my mind or something."

At his side, behind Conan's glasses, Ran was having a few seizures of her own. In truth, she had forgotten about her plans with Sonoko—you know, in light of switching bodies with her young charge who then turned out to be the guy she was madly in love with who'd been lying to her for all this time…yeah, it had just slipped her mind.

What amazed her even more was the fact that Shinichi was agreeing to it! But then she realized that he was simply playing her character. She wouldn't just ditch Sonoko like that. Oh, this would make for an interesting story. Definitely.

"But I can't go for too long," 'Ran' was saying, "I'm supposed to watch Conan-kun today."

_Brilliant move, detective, _Ran silently applauded. _I'll be your excuse to set a time limit._

Now 'Ran' was talking to her young charge. "Conan-kun," she said cheerfully, "why don't you go back to Agasa-hakase's house for a while? I know he has a meeting to go to later, so tell him I'll pick you up before he has to go, okay?" Since 'her' face was turned from Sonoko, 'she' threw in a conspiratorial wink for good measure.

_Okay, Ran, time to see how good of an actress you really are… _she thought. _If Shinichi can play a little kid and be convincing, you can too. _She took a deep breath, and… "Okay, Ran-neechan!" 'Conan' chirped. The little kid voice popped out with surprising ease, and she threw in a big 'little boy' smile for good measure. But it was kind of bizarre, knowing she was addressing herself.

'Ran' nearly bust out laughing, but managed to restrain 'herself.' "Have fun!" she straightened up and waved. "And behave yourself!" The last was called after the boy as he turned and started off back towards the doctor's house.

"I will, Ran-neechan!"

Inside Conan's mind, though, Ran was slightly concerned. Could Shinichi really pretend to be her well enough to fool Sonoko? Hell, would he retain his hold on his sanity long enough to come pick her up? Oh well, she could just hang out at Agasa's house. She was fond of the old doctor, it would be nice to have a conversation with him—

"CONAN-KUN!"

She skidded to a halt when she saw the four small bodies pouring out of the gate that lead to the doctor's house. The self-proclaimed Shounen Tantei: Ayumi, Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ai.

Ai, who was smirking. Evilly, no less.

Ran felt her heart drop into her super-powered shoes.

Ayumi sprinted right up to her and grabbed her hand. "Agasa-hakase said we just missed you, but we found you!" she bubbled with her usual high energy. "Come on, we're going to the park!"

"But—I—umm, I—" she stammered, trying to think of a good excuse, but it was too late. She'd been all but swept up by the three more energetic of the children. They were pretty much carrying her towards the park. How many times had she walked them there herself?

Ai jogged along behind them, still smirking that evil, knowing little half-smile of hers.

Being dragged along, 'Conan' was taking his turn at having fits. _Okay, Ran, breathe, _she told herself. _If Shinichi can pretend to be you and handle Sonoko for a while, you can manage being Conan and playing for a while. It's just playing, right? …right._

Still, she couldn't quite shake off that strange feeling that plagued her as the park drew nearer.

A feeling…of impending DOOM!

_I'm doooooooomed..._

_**-o-**_

From the front gate, Agasa-hakase watched Shinichi and Ran being hauled away by Sonoko and the Shounen Tantei respectively, while a smirking Ai followed the latter. He chuckled lightly and wandered back into his home. He'd heard the commotion just as he was seeing the children out, and gone out to see what was going on. It seemed things were turning themselves upside down.

Crossing the room, he lifted the phone from its cradle and glanced at a list next to the phone to double-check the number before dialing a long-distance number. He really shouldn't be doing this, but it was too hilarious to not share with a certain someone.

After a few rings, a familiar voice spoke from the other end. "Hello?"

Agasa smirked. "Yuusaku-kun?"

"Hakase?"

"I don't know how he does it," the good doctor said with a chuckle, knowing his old friend was going to find this hilarious, "but wait until you hear what mess your son's managed to get into this time…"

* * *

**PS.** _Whew, another chapter done._ _Yay! Again, I'm really sorry about the wait for this. But as I said before, this story is NOT dead. It's just in the hospital, and each chapter is a step towards full recovery! Okay, that comparison was lamer than golf sweaters, but oh well. But now that the melodrama is out of the way, we can get to some of my pitiful attempts at humor! YAY! And this also marks the first time I've written Shinichi giving Ran the Full Disclosure. Yay me! Also, the "cannabalism" line is a homage to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Johnny Depp version), because that is the funniest line in existence._

_Oh yeah, and the kitty going "mrew?" is a meager little tribute to **SoulSeeker**. I say that word more times in chat with her than anywhere else. Thanks a mil, everyone! Much love!_

**NEXT TIME: **Sonoko and the Shounen Tantei have kidnapped our confused heroes! Poor dears…wonder if they'll be able to keep things under wraps! And will Shinichi be able to handle shopping with Sonoko? Find out next time—ciao!


	4. Have the Wish I Wish Tonight

**AN: **I promise that there's an explanation as to why I haven't updated this story in over a year…but at the moment, I'm not quite sure what that explanation is. It might have something to do with the fact that my outline decided to rebel against me. And that voice you hear screaming that I'm just very lazy? That's my alter-ego, Scrabble. She's evil, and not the good Evil. That's why I keep her locked in that cage.

…is anyone still reading? Yay! Anyhoo, here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it! I don't own Conan.

* * *

**Have the Wish I Wish Tonight**

_Okay, Ran…breathe,_ the teenaged girl (currently stuck in the body of a seven year old boy) told herself over and over again in her mind as she was dragged along the sidewalk by a small group of intrepid elementary schoolers. _Don't forget to breathe. You like breathing. Breathing is good. Breathing is fun. Breathing is your friend._

"Oi!" Genta bellowed—he was apparently incapable of speaking in anything softer than 'loud enough to shake the windowpanes.' "It rained last night! There should be mud!" The other kids cheered loudly at the prospect of playing in the mud and getting nice and dirty.

_…BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE!_ Ran was officially ready to hyperventilate.

"Conan-kun!" Ayumi grabbed his hand (she was trying to think of herself in the appropriate pronouns, no matter how impossible it was proving) and gave him a wide smile complemented by big sparkly eyes. "What do you want to do at the park today?"

Ran stared at her for a second. "I…uh…" _Crap, I don't even know. Okay, let's think. WWCD—what would Conan-kun do?_ "How about…playing soccer?"

The instant she said it, she regretted it.

Her reasoning?

It was completely in-character for Conan-kun to want to play soccer. After all, he was Shinichi, version two point oh. Shinichi was the guy who could have played soccer for the national team and gone to the World Cup if he hadn't decided that solving mysteries and catching murderers was more exciting. Ran privately thought that the actual situations surrounding the murders tended to be a lot more exciting than anything else. So soccer was a fine option for him.

…except for the fact that Ran was a karate champion, NOT a soccer player. She could kick the ball around, sure, but nowhere near Shinichi's level. Which meant that she was nowhere near Conan's level. Which could mean big, big trouble.

"Just call it a bad day."

She turned to look at Haibara in surprise. "What?"

"If you can't kick the ball straight, call it a bad day," the blonde girl repeated softly. "They won't know that anything's wrong." Ran was about to thank her when she went on to say, "…but if they do, it will be very entertaining, I think."

That was the moment when Ran officially decided that Haibara was evil.

By now they had arrived at the gate to the park. There were already a lot of people out and about.

Fortunately for Ran, her earlier potential faux pas about wanting to play soccer fell by the wayside for the moment. The moment they walked through the gates, she was once again swept up and herded over to the swings at Mitsuhiko's urging.

It had been a while since she'd played on the swings like this, but…well, it couldn't hurt to live in the past for just a minute, could it? Now to see if she even remembered how to do this…

She pushed the toes of Conan's super sneakers into the sand at her feet to rock back in the swing, and then let herself go. Memory took over, and she began to pump her legs, backwards and forwards, in an attempt to get some altitude built up. With each swing, she went a little higher.

How had she forgotten how much fun this could be? She tried really hard not to laugh out loud, knowing full well that it wasn't anything Conan would do, but it was challenging! Now she remembered why she used to do this all the time when she was their age—well, their age for real.

Actually…once in a while she could even get Shinichi to play. He'd always been old for his age, though. Still, once she got him on the swings he would actually act like the child he was.

Another thought took her, and she shifted her grip on the chains and readied herself. _One. Two. And…THREE!!_ she launched herself out of the swing at the apex of its forward arch and flew through the air, landing on her feet and stumbling forward a good three feet before she steadied herself.

When she turned around, she found that the rest of the Shounen Tantei were sitting on unmoving swings, watching her with wide eyes. "Whoa, Conan…" Genta breathed. "Where'd you learn that?"

She thought back and remembered Shinichi's mother showing them the best way to jump from a swing without getting tangled up in it. She also remembered Shinichi's expression at it—half intrigued at the prospect of momentarily attaining flight…and half disgusted that a grown woman would pull such a stunt. And not just any grown woman—his freakin' mother.

…Ran privately thought that Shinichi was more like his mother than he wanted to admit. But she wouldn't tell him that. If she did, the end result might be bloody. Or screamy. Either way, not good.

But she needed an answer, so she blurted out, "Ran-neechan showed me!" That was a good excuse. Then she could cover her own ass! No worries! To complete the look, she put one hand behind her head and let out a little Conan Miniature Laugh of Embarrassed.

That seemed to do the trick, and three of the four other kids immediately set about trying to imitate Conan's impromptu flight. Only Haibara sat passively on her swing, moving back and forth just slightly as she watched the proceedings with some amusement.

It wasn't until Genta did the mother of all belly flops that they decided to find something else to do. And now, Ayumi brought up Conan's earlier suggestion of soccer. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be), they now all collectively realized that while soccer sounded like fun…they had neglected to bring a soccer ball to use.

All-around fail.

But as kids tend to do, they recovered quickly and headed for the slide.

The next fifteen minutes were rather interesting. First Mitsuhiko managed to accidentally knock Ran face-first down the slide. Then Ayumi slipped and managed to kick her in the chest hard enough to push her back off the ladder; she hit the ground with a yelp. And the grand finale, the real coup de grace, was when she went down the slide normally…and Genta went right behind her, managing to land right on top of her and squish her down into the sand.

Genta thought it was hilarious.

Mitsuhiko scolded Genta.

Ayumi rushed to Conan-kun's side to make sure he was all right.

Haibara smirked. Again with the evil…

And Ran (alias Conan) spent the next several minutes rather swirly-eyed.

After a little while, she was fine, and they began bouncing ideas around for what exactly to do next. Genta was still all for the mud, while Ran was ready to run away if it got to that point.

But then…

"STOP! THIEF!" a woman's voice screamed shrilly; it carried well over the noise of the park.

The Shounen Tantei collectively turned to look for the source of the sound, and saw a neatly-dressed woman sitting on the ground by the winding pathway that worked its way through the entire park. A man was running away from her along that same sidewalk, a white purse under his arm.

And he was coming right towards them.

Ran heard Genta start to yell something that sounded like a battle cry (again, she wondered how she missed what all these kids were getting themselves into!). Ayumi screamed. Mitsuhiko gasped.

And Ran moved.

She dropped to one knee and touched the side of the rocket sneakers, silently grateful that Shinichi had showed her how to use them earlier when she had forcibly dragged all the sordid details of this situation out of him. She heard a buzzing sound, which she took to mean that she was in business. The purse-snatcher had moved into range, and she darted forward.

And she unleashed a demonstration of her mad karate skills. In miniature, of course.

Her abilities plus Agasa's revolutionary super sneaker technology equaled an unbelievably powerful kick right to the perp's shin, just below the knee. The guy let out a scream that rivaled the woman he had stolen from, flipped over Ran, and landed flat on his back on the ground; the purse landed on the sidewalk next to her. He groaned and sort of tilted his head from one side to the other, but otherwise he did not move or make any attempt to get back to his feet.

She took a deep breath, centered herself, and relaxed. Mission accomplished.

While a patrol cop came running to make the collar, Ran calmly picked up the fallen purse and toodled over to the woman it had been stolen from. She was still sitting on the grass, and she looked shocked at having witnessed the unfolding events. And she wasn't the only one. Quite a few people were staring at Ran in amazement.

She ignored them and held the purse out to the woman, putting Conan's biggest cute little boy smile on her face. "Here, miss. This is yours, right?" There, that was good. All little boy energy and innocence and happiness to be doing something nice.

The woman stared at him (her? It? These damn pronouns were making her head hurt!) for a moment, then smiled back. "Oh, I—thank you!" She reached out and took her newly-retrieved purse from the little boy. "How did you stop him like that?" As she asked, she slowly got to her feet.

"I just kicked him and he fell!" Ran felt the words bubble cheerily out of her without so much as a thought. It took no effort whatsoever to put on such a convincing childish act.

And somehow…she felt a little bit dirty. She didn't know why. But she did.

The crowd was beginning to disperse now as the police officer cuffed the suspect and began asking the victim some questions. She walked back over to the kids, who were staring at her in wide-eyed shock. She fidgeted nervously, then looked down at her watch in mock-surprise. "Uh-oh…Ran-neechan said she was going to pick me up soon. I'd better get back to Agasa-hakase's!" Without waiting for them to recover and react, she turned and ran, waving over her shoulder. "Bye!"

"Wait!" Genta called. "But…the mud…"

Once she was out of sight (and away from Haibara's knowing Smirk of Evil), she paused and leaned against a wall, feeling her heart hammer in her chest. That…could have been worse, right?

**_-o-_**

_This could be worse,_ Shinichi thought bleakly as he followed a jabbering Sonoko into the mall. _This could be a lot worse. I'm not sure how it could be worse, but I know it could be worse._

"Come on! They're having a sale on swimming suits!" Sonoko cheered. "Let's look at bikinis!"

_…I'm going to my happy place now,_ Shinichi shuddered internally, but managed to keep his face neutral and obediently followed her towards the aforementioned department. And sure enough, there were many, many…well, what could loosely be called clothes hanging all over the place. Most were in some bright, garish colors—if the sunlight at the beach didn't blind you, the color of the fabric would.

Sonoko immediately dove in, searching for the elusive perfect bikini to wear to the beach, thereby securing the attention of whatever hapless young man happened to catch her attention at that particular moment. Inside Ran's mind, Shinichi tried to stay back. Still, he found himself rather haphazardly browsing the racks—if only to keep Sonoko from pestering him further.

…and he slowly found himself looking at a couple of suits here and there, and finding himself trying to imagine how Ran would look wearing them. And then he would give himself a mental kick in the ass, but he just couldn't quite help himself. It was THERE!!

And as if Sonoko was somehow reading his mind (and for the love of GOD, he really hoped she wasn't), she popped up behind him. "You should try a couple on!" she smirked.

"NO!" Shinichi yelped. "I mean, ah…no, that's okay."

Sonoko raised an eyebrow, then smirked. "Are you sure? Don't you want to look your best when Shinichi comes back?" The look on her face could only be described as blonde evil—and though not of the same league as Gin's Blonde Evil, it was no less dangerous at this moment.

"I really don't—" he tried to protest again, but Sonoko cut him off. She shoved a couple hangers into his hands and bodily hauled him towards the dressing rooms. "Sonoko—wait! I don't want to—" that last was cut off as the dressing room door slammed behind him.

"Just try them on!" Sonoko ordered from the other side of the door.

It was at this point that Shinichi found himself at a very difficult crossroad in his seventeen year old life. On the one hand, he had the opportunity of a lifetime. On the other hand, if he took advantage of that opportunity…he would die. But he had the feeling that Sonoko would know if he tried to pretend he'd tried them on, and she would throw a fit, which was something that he really didn't want to deal with at the moment. Which left him with approximately one option.

…oooh, he was going to die so hard.

A sign in the dressing room caught his eye, asking ladies to please retain their undergarments when trying on swimwear. He breathed a sigh of relief at that. That eliminated one major problem. That left only about five hundred major problems to be dealt with.

Ran was going to murder him for this…and if the record was any indication, unless they somehow got Hattori to come in, solve the case, AND squeal on her, his death would go unsolved.

Taking a deep breath, he put his back to the mirror, closed his eyes, and attempted to do this as quickly as possible. In very, VERY short order he pulled the sweatshirt and T-shirt over his head and yanked the top into place without touching too much of anything he wasn't supposed to.

Although at one point his hand did brush against something very soft and slightly squishy, and he almost completely derailed, but he made himself focus because dammit now was not the time!

Finally, somehow, he got the top half taken care of, and then he opened his eyes. That took care of the greater of two evils. From there, getting the bottoms on wasn't quite as difficult because he was still covered. And finally, the entire ensemble was safely in place and he was able to open his eyes, feeling relatively secure that he wasn't going to see anything he wasn't supposed to.

"Okay…" he called. "I'm wearing it."

"Let me see!" Sonoko crowed from the other side of the door.

Shinichi hesitantly opened the dressing room door, and was nearly floored when Sonoko came flying in. "Let's take a look…oh my god." Sonoko grinned broadly. "You HAVE to get that!" She then grabbed his arm and pulled him in front of the mirror, forcing him to look at his own reflection.

He felt like he shouldn't look, and he…okay, he really truly wanted to look, because Ran in a bikini was always a beautiful thing to his mind…but he was really trying not to, if only out of a belated sense of propriety and respect, but under Sonoko's watchful eye he had no real choice. Ran wouldn't worry so much about it, and he had to be at least marginally convincing as Ran.

So…he looked in the mirror.

And…

Wow.

It went without saying that Ran looked really awesome in red, and she was really pretty to begin with and she definitely had a great figure, and when highlighted in a bikini that was more towards the skimpy side of Sears…

Ran was HOT.

And Shinichi liked.

Shinichi liked a LOT.

Now if only he didn't feel so dirty about ogling what was technically his own reflection in the mirror. Because that's really what he was doing—he was drooling over…himself. Except it wasn't actually himself—it was Ran. Which was even worse because he at least liked to pretend he was a gentleman…

And now his head hurt.

Maybe he needed to stop thinking for a while…

Sonoko slung a casual arm around "Ran's" shoulders. "You need to get that. It looks great! And can you just imagine the look on Shinichi's face if he saw you in that? Bet he loses his jaw…"

Shinichi swallowed hard. "So-Sonoko!" He felt his face go the same shade of vibrant crimson as the itsy bitsy teeny weeny red and white polka dot bikini. He seemed to be blushing a lot more easily as Ran than he did as himself. Or so he liked to think.

To his surprise, Sonoko let go of him and leaned back against the wall, arms folded. "Ya know, I really don't get that boy. He just runs off and leaves you here to pine away and wait for him…how cruel." He was stunned to realized that she was completely serious.

Shinichi's eyes widened at what he was hearing. "Well…maybe he has a good reason for doing what he's doing right now." It was the truth, but he couldn't diverge all the details. He'd only told Ran…well, out of fear for his life.

Sonoko sighed. "It's still not fair to you. Ran, you should go out and have a whirlwind romance and forget about him! Let him be jealous!" That last was said with the sort of zeal she usually displayed when she was talking about her own intended romantic conquests.

To his own surprise, Shinichi felt a smile come to his face. "Sonoko…it's not like that."

"I know, I know…but it still stinks," she huffed. "So you're getting that. End of discussion." And she scooted out of the dressing room, leaving Shinichi to stare after her and change.

As he began the process of getting redressed (which was still proving quite a challenge), Shinichi realized that maybe, just maybe…Sonoko wasn't quite as annoying as he'd always thought. She really did care a lot about Ran, and maybe a lot of her rants about romance were because she didn't want Ran to be lonely. And he could respect that, he really could…

"Hurry up in there!" Sonoko called. "We should go look at lingerie next!"

…scratch that. She was COMPLETELY annoying.

And so he obligingly let her drag him over to the aforementioned lingerie department. She did exactly what he thought she would—she kept pointing things out to Ran and making jokes about whether or not Shinichi would like them. And he got annoyed and told her to knock it off. Repeatedly.

She didn't listen.

Still…he had never really looked at this particular department before, and in some ways it was…rather interesting. For one, there were a LOT of options. And some of them were…very interesting looking. Like, he was trying to decide if anyone would actually wear it.

But there was one garment in particular that seemed to be made up entirely of strategically-placed straps. And he found himself standing there and staring at it for far longer than he probably should have. But it was fascinating—this particular number didn't look like it had any real way to get in or out of it easily. Was this the "make him work for it" section or something?

…and he couldn't help but look at a pretty little sapphire blue nightgown and robe set and think, _You know…Ran would look really, really good in that. It would really show off the fact that she's got a great—ACK! NO! BAD THOUGHTS! BAD!_

This whole situation was bad for Ran's honor. Really, really, really bad.

By the time he finally got Sonoko to agree to look at something that didn't involve putting ninety percent of one's skin acreage on display, he was nervous and sweating a little bit and having all sorts of pretty, albeit unprintable thoughts that would probably entertain some of his more interesting dreams for the next couple of months.

And much to his chagrin, Sonoko did make him get the bathing suit.

This was not going to be good.

Still, when the appointed time to go pick up "Conan" came, Shinichi rushed out of there with his newly acquired purchase in a plastic bag in his hand. He'd figure out some way to explain this to Ran, he decided. And if worst came to worst…well, he could run faster than she could in this situation.

**_-o-_**

"Hello?" Shinichi poked his head into Agasa's house and looked around.

The doctor appeared a second later, beaming. "Ah, Ran—err, Shinichi-kun! Welcome back! Ran-kun's already here. You both survived." He waited as Shinichi came inside and slipped off his shoes before leading him down to the sitting room, where "Conan" was sitting and enjoying a cup of tea.

Ran looked up at him as he came in. "You look as tired as I feel."

He dropped onto the couch. "That was awful…and yet strangely wonderful."

"So you survived shopping with Sonoko," Ran's grin was only slightly wicked. "I'm sure that's the most harrowing task ever inflicted on a guy. Glad to see you're in one piece."

"And you survived the kids?" he chuckled. "They're not bad kids, really. But they can get a little…overexcited about things. Genta, in particular. I'm sure you noticed that."

"I'm pretty sure I just narrowly avoided being tossed head-first into a mud puddle," Ran sighed, taking a sip of tea from the cup in her hand. "They seemed pretty gung-ho about that idea. Ai-kun isn't back yet, though. She's probably still out with the kids."

"Sonoko said she was going home," he said. "Which is good enough for me.

Ran looked like she was going to say something, but then she paused and looked down at his hand. "…Shinichi…" she said slowly. "What's in the bag? Did you buy something?"

Shinichi froze. "Well, I…um, I mean…yes. I did buy something. Or I guess I should say that Sonoko made me buy something because she thought that 'Shinichi' would like it." He made finger quotes in the air when he said his own name. "And…well, I tried to resist and say no, but she wouldn't take no for an answer, and so…umm…"

Her expression darkened with suspicion. "Give me the bag."

Realizing that look as meaning Certain Doom, he took a deep breath and handed it to her. And then he waited for three-foot-tall death to open a can on him.

Ran took the bag and opened it and pulled out the scraps of red and white polka dotted fabric hooked together in a shape that would vaguely cover the various parts of the female anatomy. And she stared at it. She stared at it for a very long moment.

Nearby, Agasa coughed delicately.

Finally, Ran spoke. "Did you try this on at the store?"

"Umm…" Shinichi swallowed hard. "…no?"

With a slowness that almost flew in the face of normal human capabilities, she turned to look at him. And the expression on her face defied any and all description. No words could have ever adequately described that Look, nor could they have really related the terror that the Look struck into Shinichi's heart.

"Shinichi." When she said his name, it was a low, hollow sound that seemed to echo with all the force of a million demons behind it. It would have make a lesser man than Shinichi shake in his shoes. "You are going to die a very slow, painful death as soon as I get my body back."

"Yes, ma'am," he squeaked.

* * *

**PS.** _You have no idea how much fun this was to write while at the same time being INCREDIBLY difficult. You really don't. And I don't use Sonoko as a character very often, either. Poor Shinichi. And poor Ran. Are they going to catch a break? Probably not._

**_ALSO, I'M SORT OF INTERESTED AS TO WHAT ALL OF YOU THINK THESE POOR SOULS SHOULD DO WITH THEIR DAY. SO PLEASE TO BE SENDING ME YOUR THOUGHTS!!_**

_Thanks for reading, all! Much love!_

**NEXT TIME:** Heiji arrives on the scene. Let's see if they can figure out what caused the switch…


	5. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

**AN: **And so we update again! And it only took FOUR months this time, yay! I hope you enjoy the new chapter, ladies and gents. I don't own Detective Conan. It belongs to Gosho Aoyama.

* * *

**Twinkle Twinkle Little Star**

Hattori Heiji stepped onto the train platform and looked around. The trip from Osaka to Tokyo had felt very short this time—almost unbelievably so, almost as though some greater power was at work to hasten his journey to help his friends. It was almost like he had become some sort of convenient plot device in some crazy author's ludicrous fanfiction or something…

As Heiji pondered the station's fourth wall (and noticed that it seemed to be breaking—how odd), he heard a tired female voice say, "Oi, Hattori! Over here!"

He followed the voice, and found two very somber people waiting for him. One was a small boy, approximately seven years old, wearing glasses and an irate expression. The other was a girl around his own age. She had long hair and the look of one who would rather eat live sea anemones than be standing there. They made an odd pair, standing together and looking everywhere EXCEPT at each other.

Heiji walked up to them. He looked back and forth for a moment before he said, "Well…I feel the love."

The little boy looked at him with the full force of a very teenaged glare. "I think one of us has already 'felt' the love, thank you very much."

Before Heiji could ask, the "girl" threw her hands in the air in obvious frustration. "I said was I sorry! You try arguing with Sonoko!"

"Whoa, time out!" Heiji cut them off, putting his hands together to form a T in the universal time-out signal, something that no athlete could EVER ignore. In a rare flash of insight, he realized that he needed to take control of the situation. Something was obviously amiss here, and it wasn't just that Heiji was going to have to act as the voice of reason. "Okay. Back up." He looked at the child. "Neechan?" He got a curt nod in response, and so turned to the young woman. "Ku—err, Conan?"

"Call me Kudo," 'she' said flatly. "Everyone else is today."

It didn't escape Heiji's eye that Neechan (in Conan's body) blushed at those words. But given what he (and half the planet) knew of Mouri Ran, she had probably been dreaming about being a Kudo since SHE was seven. It seemed that dream was coming true in the most unexpected, indirect way possible.

Poor Neechan. First he shrank and disappeared, and she had to find out he was lying to her by getting stuck in his miniaturized body. The girl was having a bit of a rough time. Heiji briefly considered she get Kudo on a leash, but if Kazuha got wind of that idea, the results had the potential to be disastrous in more ways than one. Abandon ship!

"Okay…Kudo and Neechan," he repeated.

"Can you remember that?" Kudo asked.

"Yes."

"You seem to have trouble with names, that's all."

"Shove it," he snapped. "Okay, so…how much does everyone know about…what's going on?" He gestured towards chibi-Neechan, trying to get his point across. He was very proud of himself, really—he was making a rare demonstration of tact!

"I've got the full story on Conan," Ran piped up. "We went over all of that at Agasa-hakase's house. But we don't know how…this happened." As she said the word 'this' she made a motion towards herself and…herself, really.

"We haven't had much time to talk since then," Kudo added. "She went to the playground, and I went shopping. With Sonoko." At that last, there was a definite flinch.

"And I'm hungry," Ran added. At the looks they gave her, she shrugged her small shoulders. "What? I am."

"And Hattori's stomach is a black hole—"

"Hey!"

"—so should we find lunch?" Kudo finished, ignoring the outburst.

This was very much an agreeable plan to all parties involved, and they decided on a place and started walking. After they'd gone about a block, Heiji spoke up again. "So…what the hell happened, exactly?"

After a few beats of silence, Ran spoke up. "I woke up in my dad's room. He was snoring. It was scary. Then I realized how short I was. That was even scarier. Went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, had a heart attack, and went to find myself."

"That sounds like a T-shirt slogan," Kudo commented.

"Sure, why not?" Ran shrugged again. "I already feel like a walking punchline."

"…you're talking like Kudo," Heiji said dryly.

"I can't help it if I default to sarcasm," Kudo said. "Anyway, I woke up in Ran's room, didn't realize I was suddenly a lot taller, and so introduced myself to the floor. Got a nice surprise when I looked in the mirror."

"Neechan, how did you figure out he was—"

"First I noticed that the glasses were fake, which was strange," Ran replied. "And then I figured out that this," she pulled the bowtie out of her pocket, "could do something really interesting. It was Shinichi's voice coming out of the other side, and Shinichi had called me earlier in the day. It all just added up." She grinned. "And then I yelled. A lot."

"Agreed."

"Hush, you deserved it."

It was like watching a comedy duo. How did he wind up being the voice of reason here? That was not normal, and seemed to fly in the face of some law of nature! "So the question now is how this happened, right? Or why?"

Kudo shrugged and pushed his long hair back with one hand. "I will admit to having no clue on the matter. This is like something out of a fairy tale, or a shoujo manga…"

"Yeah," Heiji nodded in agreement. "And we live in a shounen manga, so—"

_CRACK._

Across the street, a big chunk of the fourth wall crashed down onto the sidewalk.

Kudo gave him a Look. "Stop that."

While this exchange was going on, Ran was thinking things over very carefully. She even adopted Shinichi/Conan's patented hand-to-chin thinking pose—and she was perfectly content to blame it solely on muscle memory. Why else would she be acting like a detective geek?

And then it hit her like a ton of bricks—only less painful and without crushing any vital organs.

She stopped dead in her tracks. "Oh my God…"

A hand grabbed hers—a much larger hand—and pulled her along. "No epiphanies in the middle of the street," Shinichi said as they reached the sidewalk; they ignored the honking car horns and continued on their way. Then he asked, "Did you think of something?"

"Maybe," she murmured, a reddish tinge rising in her cheeks.

Well, _that_ was interesting… "What?" Heiji jumped in.

Neechan was silent.

"C'mon, Ran," Shinichi cajoled. "It can't be that bad."

"…last night," she finally admitted, "I made a wish. On a shooting star."

Heiji blinked. "You wished that the two of you would switch places?"

"No, no."

"Then what?"

"Well…" she hesitated and visibly wavered before her shoulders slumped forward in defeat. "I wished that I could be…closer to Shinichi."

Ran was blushing.

Shinichi was blushing.

Heiji was howling.

Ran was embarrassed.

Shinichi was growling.

Heiji was nursing a nice bruise on his shin, courtesy of Shinichi's temper.

The two swapped-teenagers were both very red-faced at this point, looking everywhere but at each other. Neechan actually looked fairly miserable, Heiji noticed. Poor kid—literally.

"Okay," the Osakan teen took pity on them both and spoke up to try and relieve some of the tension, "so let's assume that's the reason for this switch—even though it seems really far-fetched…"

"So does a seventeen-year-old shrinking to a seven-year-old by means of a magic poison," Kudo cut in.

"Or people switching bodies, period," Neechan added.

"Point."

"So how do we switch back?" Neechan asked, still not daring to look up at herself—or the person currently inhabiting herself. When she'd made the wish, it had been a very spur of the moment thing, a throwback to fanciful stories she'd heard as a child growing up. Now she not only had to admit to quietly believing in such things, but she had to 'fess it up to Shinichi, of all people…

Ran wanted to get on a plane. And she wanted to fly off to some unnamed tropical island and hide there. She could survive on coconuts, no problem! They made lovely bathing suit tops!

…but now she was having some very…err, vivid mental images of her and Shinichi on the beach. That meant that it was time for her to stop thinking. Thinking was the enemy.

"Neechan," Heiji was speaking to her, and she refocused, "how exactly did you word this wish?"

Her face went crimson. "I wished I could be closer to Shinichi…even if it was just for one day."

"So maybe that's how long this will last?" Shinichi suggested. "One day?"

"That would make sense," Heiji agreed. "So tomorrow, you'll be back to your normal selves? Err…in a manner of speaking, at least?" He added that last as a result of a mild glare from Kudo. After all, Kudo wasn't his normal self. Kudo was stuck as Conan. Although…given how long Kudo had been trapped as Conan, it could almost be argued that now it was normal for him to be Conan, couldn't it?

Actually…how long had he been Conan, anyway? Sometimes it felt like it had been at least thirteen years! Conan _was_ normal now!

…and now Heiji's head hurt. He really wasn't used to thinking outside of murder cases. It hurt his brain.

"What happens if we don't switch back?" Ran asked softly. She sounded so nervous.

"If you don't?" Heiji replied, smirking. "Kudo will die the first time he has to take a shower." It was cruel, but it was so much fun to watch them blush!

Kudo sighed. "Let's just eat…"

_**-o-**_

Putting a hungry Hattori anywhere in the vicinity of food was officially on the top of Shinichi's DO NOT WANT list. Especially when the food in question was takoyaki. The man became a rampaging black hole on legs, and it was rather frightening.

Still, they managed to wrangle him into a chair and place their orders with relatively little fuss.

With the revelation of Ran's wish and the resulting mortification, there was no way in hell that Heiji was going back to Osaka anytime soon. Kudo was already insanely fun to tease on a normal day. Add this twist to the mix, and it was like the heavens opened and holy light rained down as the angels descended amidst the Hallelujah Chorus to bless him with opportunity. He would be a fool to pass it up.

But before he begin in earnest, his cell phone rang, and the Hallelujah Chorus was replaced the ominous perfect fourth of Beethoven's Fifth. He knew before he even glanced at the screen—it was HER. The last thing he wanted to do was pick up the phone. But if he didn't answer, things would be even worse for him in the long run. Especially considering that he'd sort of broken plans with her to go running off to Tokyo. Might as well face the music now and get it over with.

While his friends watched curiously, he pressed the button to answer the call and put the phone to his ear. He took a deep breath to steady himself before he said, "Hello?"

"HEIJI, WHERE ARE YOU???"

The earth shook, windows shattered, fire hydrants exploded, several adorably fluffy puppies keeled over and died, and people emerged from their homes in panic and terror, certain that War of the Worlds had just landed on their doorsteps. Heiji, meanwhile, had gone all Phineas Gage with a giant exclamation point right through his head.

Ran and Shinichi crawled out from under the cracked table, where they had dove for cover at the first sign of the shockwave. They took off their World War I-style German helmets, removed the cotton balls from their ears, and took their seats back at the table.

From behind Ran's eyes, Shinichi was _quite_ amused. "I don't think she's very happy with you." Ran poked him under the table and gave him a Look. It was fairly obvious that she didn't think he had any room to talk, all things considered.

Shinichi shut up.

For the next several minutes they were treated to half of the conversation. Hattori recovered quickly (after all, he'd had far worse injuries than busted eardrums), and tried to rationally explain the situation without actually explaining the situation. Needless to say, the conversation was not going well, and quickly descended into a contest of who could use the word "ahou" in a single sentence.

There was something to be said for a man who could utter the sentence, "You are the biggest, most ahou-ing-est ahou to ever ahou something ahou-ly!" The jury was still out on whether or not the 'something to be said' was complementary or not.

When he finally hung up the phone, he shoved it back into his pocket and assumed the full-blown pout. "Ahou…" When he noticed the strange looks his two companions were giving him and each other, he rolled his eyes. "Kazuha wanted me to go shopping with her today. But I came here instead."

"…when you two finally figure out how you feel about each other, I imagine that you're going to have to have someone come in and soundproof your walls," Shinichi deadpanned.

"O-oi!"

"Hope I'm invited to the wedding. Bet it'll be one hell of a party…"

"Oh? So what about you and Neechan?" Heiji asked, a particularly predatory look taking root in his eyes. "That'll be the wedding of the century, won't it?"

"Idiot," Shinichi snapped back.

"Oh?" Heiji's grin was downright feral. "So you're saying you don't want to marry her?"

Shinichi looked over at Ran. She looked back with wide, bespectacled eyes. There was no way he could answer that question either way without it backfiring. If he said he wouldn't mind marrying Ran (the truth), Hattori would hound him about it forever. Bt if he lied, he was going to break Ran's heart for the sake of his own pride. And if he couldn't admit his feelings in front of Hattori, how was he supposed to say it to the world? Although the world at large didn't like to directly tease him so much…

He glared at the Osakan teen. "You son of a—"

"Boys!" Ran jumped in with a hissed whisper. "Calm down!"

"I want him to answer," Heiji said. "Or maybe you already have the ring picked out and everything, hmm?"

Shinichi felt his (her?) face flush a brilliant crimson. He definitely wasn't about to admit that Hattori was right on that count. Unless…

He fixed Heiji with a fearless glare and said, "So what if I do?"

He was going to pay for this later. He would pay for it ten times over in heckling and teasing. But at this precise moment, it was worth it to see the goggled look on Hattori's face. The man looked like he'd just been told that there was a new law banning takoyaki.

A glance at Ran proved that she too looked completely gobsmacked. But before Shinichi could say anything to her, Hattori recovered and spoke up. "You're full of it!"

"How do you know that?"

"Ahou!"

"Isn't that your pet name for your girlfriend?"

"She's—"

"Not your girlfriend. We've all heard this song before. Maybe you should learn a new one? Do a little dance while you're at it?"

"You little—"

"You two fight like you're married!" the waitress bubbled; the young woman had magically appeared beside them, bearing their food. She set their plates down in front of them and tucked her tray under her arm. "It's so nice to see a young couple with such good communication!" She patted 'Conan' on the head. "I bet you're having fun spending time with your big sister and her boyfriend, aren't you, sweetie?"

The faux little boy nodded, to dumbstruck to do anything else.

"Well, enjoy your meal!" the waitress cheered before taking her leave.

The two male teenagers stared at the young woman's retreating back for a long moment before they slowly turned to look at each other with identical expressions of horror. She thought…they were…oh god…

Meanwhile, Ran watched the scene with interest and snickered behind her hand at their matched looks. She was feeling rather mischievous, and given her current physical state, she felt she could probably get away with it. "You two never told me you were—"

"WE'RE NOT!"

"NO WAY!"

She laughed at their panicked disclaimers, took a bite of her takoyaki (and goodness, it tasted good!), and made a mental note to ask Shinichi about the ring issue later, when they were alone.

* * *

**PS.** _So Heiji makes the scene…and attacks the fourth wall. Huzzah! The "he's been Conan for thirteen years" thing is a reference to how long the series has been going—sort of like how Dennis the Menace has been five years old for almost sixty years. And the scene at the end…shounen ai fans rejoice:D?_

_One quick note: Phineas Gage is a man many hear about in their psychology classes. He was using an iron rod to tap down some dirt or sand around some explosives, and he accidentally caused a spark, which set off the explosives. The resulting explosion blew the iron rod right through his head. He survived, but his personality completely changed. Look it up if you have a chance. The reference there was the idea of Heiji with an exclamation point through his head._

_As always, if you have thoughts for this story, feel free to share. Thanks for reading, all! Much love!_


	6. How I Wonder What You Are

**AN: **So how about them (insert sports team of your choice here), eh? No, I have not forgotten this story. Yes, I am going to finish it. Blessings be to **Fyliwion** for prodding this chapter into existence a lot sooner than it otherwise might have been. I hope you enjoy it. I don't own Detective Conan.

* * *

**How I Wonder What You Are**

"Oh, come on, guys," Ran shook her head and laughed at the two trailing along behind her. "It's not that bad. Really. It's not." Try as she might, though, she couldn't quite keep the very tiny giggle from escaping her right at the end of that sentence.

Behind her, Kudo Shinichi (currently inhabiting Ran's own body) and Hattori Heiji (still very much his ahou self) were both glaring at everything around them, looking everywhere but at each other. Heiji had his arms crossed. Shinichi was trying to cross his arms as well, but due to certain recently acquired frontal aspects of his temporary body, he was having a bit of difficulty in accomplishing that simple feat. Finally he just gave up and shoved his hands into the pockets of the jeans he was wearing.

The two had been acting like children ever since the waitress had made the comment about them being such an adorable couple with such good communication. And if there had ever existed a more fitting situation to the phrase "acting like children," Ran would eat Conan's super powered sneakers.

With soy sauce and maybe some rice.

It was funny, and the aftermath had been amusing. But now it was just starting to get old. "Shinichi. Hattori-kun," she said finally, turning and glaring up at them with all the imposing force of her seven year old form. "That's enough. Look, we all know what the situation is. That waitress didn't. Take it as a compliment and move on."

"A compliment?" Shinichi sputtered. "What kind of compliment could that possibly be?"

Ran thought for a moment, studied Heiji's face, then smiled. "It's a compliment for me."

"…it is?"

"Yeah," Ran grinned as she turned and started walking again. "I have good taste."

Heiji got it a second before Shinichi did, and offered it up verbally to his confuddled friend. "Kudo, I think the translation there is that I'm hot."

Try as he might to hold it in, the big dumb grin refused to stay off his face, and he beamed. What could he do, though? Really? His best friend's girlfriend (he refused to even say that the two were anything less than a pair) had just cheerfully admitted to finding him attractive. He could practically hear his ego inflating, like someone had just hooked up a big ol' air compressor.

Shinichi glowered and Shinichi glared…

And then Shinichi grinned. "Maybe I should mention that to Kazuha-chan," he said lightly.

"What good would that do?" Heiji asked, baffled.

"You like Ran as a friend, right?"

"Yeah."

"You want her to stay in good health?"

"Of course."

"I'm glad to hear it. So now, Hattori, what is Kazuha-chan's default reaction towards any girl who gets close to you or expresses any interest in you at all?" Shinichi asked.

…oh.

Oh dear.

"Neechan, let's not repeat this conversation to Kazuha. She might try to kill you," Heiji said finally.

**_-o-_**

In Osaka, Toyama Kazuha was bent over her plans for vengeance. Heiji had blown her off one too many times to go running off and doing whatever the hell it was that he did, the stupid ahou. So now she was plotting revenge on him.

Nothing that would permanently damage him, of course. She rather liked having him in one piece, for a wide variety of reasons (including a few reasons that would stay extremely well-hidden inside the most private portions of her mind, thank you very much). But a bit of pain would do an ahou good.

She was busily designing the part of her Revenge Machine that flung the weasels across the room when suddenly she sneezed hard enough to rattle her teeth. Kazuha sat up and glanced around. She sensed a disturbance in the force. That feeling could only mean one thing. Somewhere, somehow…

…a girl had just complimented Heiji.

Kazuha decided that she really needed to put him on a leash. It was for his own good and his own protection. She vowed to do this right after she finished designing her machine, the next step of which consisted of figuring out the best angle for the toilet plunger.

**_-o-_**

Heiji glanced up towards the sky, a chill running down his spine. "I have a bad feeling all of a sudden…as though Kazuha just plotted something really evil against me, and then fell silent."

Shinichi shrugged. "Probably just your imagination."

"…eh, you're probably right."

"So what do we want to do?" Ran asked. "We can't just walk around like this all day. Let's do something fun!" She bounced from one foot to the next as she spoke, looking every inch the excited child.

"Like what?" Shinichi asked.

"I don't know. What's around here?" Ran looked around, glancing all over, until she spotted lights nearby. "How about we go there?" She pointed towards the lights and started marching in their direction. "Lights generally mean something fun!"

When they saw exactly what the lights were, however, Shinichi's enthusiasm tanked to an all-time low, and he skidded to a stop fast enough to melt the bottom of Ran's sneakers. "Oh no, I am not going in there. You cannot pay me enough to want to go back into that place."

They were standing in front of Tropical Land.

Ran looked up at it, then back at him. "Why not?"

"Because this is where—"

"I thought you were out of the park when that happened," she asked.

"Well, I—"

"Didn't you chase him across the street or something?"

"Yes, but—"

"Right, so nothing to be afraid of. Let's go!"

Heiji smirked as Shinichi sighed and started walking towards the gate with steps that only dragged a little. It was always fun to watch Ran pull stuff like that. No one else could get Kudo to do stuff like that. For all the protests, he really did have a hard time saying no to her.

They made their way up to the front gate and quickly paid their entry fee before making their way into the park; the woman at the ticket counter had given them a very fond look, indicating that she seemed to think they were quite a cute couple. Thankfully for her health and Shinichi and Heiji's collective blood pressure, she did not actually ay anything to them.

Aside from a couple of new rides or changes to vendors, things had not changed since the last time Shinichi had been there, which he not so privately counted as the Worst Day of His Life. The only redeeming factors of the Worst Day of His Life were that Ran had held his hand on the roller coaster, and that he had found out how Ran felt about him.

He would consider both of those things to be happy. Very happy. If only they hadn't happened on the same bloody day as the big shrink. He would need to smite Gin extra hard for this after this whole big mess was over and done with.

But in the meantime, Ran had procured a map and was mumbling under her breath, trying to decide where they should go first. "The Mystery Coaster's over there…but there's also the pirate ship. Maybe the Scrambler would be a good place to start…oh, or the Black Diamond Coaster, that one's pretty sweet when you go upside down…"

Heiji had suddenly gone a shade paler. "Black Diamond Coaster?"

Ran looked at him brightly. "Oh, you want to go there? All right, to the coaster!" She pointed down the appropriate path that would lead them to Heiji's apparent first choice for rides.

Surprisingly, Heiji didn't move. "Err, I…"

It was Shinichi who twigged on first, and who grinned. Oh, there was much teasing material to be had today, wasn't there? "Hattori, don't tell me…oh, there's no way, no freakin' way. You can't be scared of roller coasters, can you?" The last had a slight lilt to the voice to indicate a tiny amount of derision. It was the more eloquent version of one child calling another child a scaredy cat.

Hattori took the bait. "I am not afraid of roller coasters!" he barked.

"Oh really?" Shinichi said. "Then what's the hold up?"

"I just don't really like roller coasters, that's all," Heiji said imperiously.

"…you're scared of them."

"I am not!"

"Prove it."

Oh, how two little words could cause so much injury to a person's pride if their challenge was left unmet. Heiji visibly wavered for only a moment before his chin jutted out defiantly. "Fine. Let's go get on this Black Diamond Coaster. It'll be fun!"

Shinichi privately claimed victory.

Heiji sulked.

Ran wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but she assumed that it was amusing.

Fortunately, there wasn't much of a line, so they were able to get on the coaster quickly; they only had to wait for two full sets of passengers to go in front of them. Heiji continued to grow paler and paler until his face was almost the same color as Shinichi's own. Then he started turning faintly green as they moved closer and closer. Ran was starting to look worried.

Seeing an opportunity that could not be missed, Shinichi smiled and gave Hattori a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Do you want me to hold your hand on the ride?"

"No, Kudo." Heiji's voice was pure acid. "No, I do not."

There was a pause then as someone whispered something about the 'cute couple,' and both teenagers were distracted from their fight and preoccupied with many disclaimers and much flailing of arms.

As they climbed into the car, thought, Shinichi wondered if Hattori was reconsidering that offer. He and Ran sat next to each other (and Ran assured the attendant that no, she wasn't scared at all because Big Sister was there to keep her safe). Hattori didn't say a word or make a sound. But when Shinichi glanced back, he did see that Hattori was holding onto his safety harness hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

Then the ride began to move.

As far as roller coasters went, it was pretty badass. It twisted and turned and dipped and crested and spun and went upside down three times! Everyone in the cars screamed, cheered, and laughed as their stomachs were collectively sent shooting up into their throats before being dropped down into their feet by another sudden change in direction.

When the ride came to a stop, everyone climbed off…

Except Hattori, who was now as green as a bottle of Mountain Dew, and had to sit for a moment before he shakily got up and stumbled away from the car, brushing aside Shinichi's offer of assistance.

"You know, you really didn't have to go on the ride, Hattori-kun," Ran said a few minutes later. Heiji was sitting on a bench with a bottle of water. His normal pallor had already returned somewhat, but he kept glaring at Shinichi, who had the grace to at least look a bit sheepish.

"Can we go on something that doesn't go upside down now?" Heiji asked.

"There's a Ferris Wheel?" Shinichi pointed out.

The Ferris Wheel, they all decided, was a good idea. Off they went. They all wound up in the same car, despite a couple of jokes as to whether or not certain persons would like to ride alone. Slowly, they began to climb up towards the sky in a long arc.

For the moment, at least, everything was pleasant and relaxed. They didn't say much, choosing instead to just watch out the window as they moved. It was a nice view, both of the park itself and of the area surrounding the park.

As they were nearing the peak of the ride, Ran sighed. She was sitting on her knees on the bench with her arms resting on the back of the seat to look out the side window. "You know, it's sort of weird, but between being up here and being stuck in a smaller body…it's like a big secret. Like I'm seeing something that no one else will ever really get to see."

Heiji's jaw dropped. "You can see Harvey?"

Shinichi snorted. "For God's sake, Hattori, no one's going to get that reference."

The Ferris Wheel carriage shook for a moment as the fourth wall trembled and cracked.

This time it was Shinichi's turn to look sheepish at it. "Whoops. Sorry."

"That's not actually what I meant, Shinichi," Ran said slowly. Although being able to see a six foot tall rabbit would be pretty neat, in a nightmare-inducing kind of way. "I guess I meant that it's like I'm seeing the whole world through completely different eyes, from a whole bunch of different points of view, and it's kind of fun."

"But Neechan, you actually ARE seeing the world through different eyes," Heiji pointed out, reaching over to point to the glasses perched on her nose. "Last I recall, you had twenty-twenty vision."

She had the good grace to laugh.

"You're reminding me that I feel weird without the glasses," Shinichi said.

Ran took them off and looked at them. "I feel like Clark Kent. Does this mean I can be Superman?"

"Both Hattori and Kaitou Kid have already made that joke," Shinichi said with a sigh.

"Aww, and here I thought I was being original," Ran pretended to pout before what he said caught up with her. "Wait. Kaitou Kid said that to you?" When Shinichi nodded, Ran gaped at him without reserve. "Kaitou Kid knows who you are too?"

"I'm pretty sure he does," Shinichi said thoughtfully. "I've got a guess as to when he figured it out, based on circumstances that happened around that time. As near as I can tell, he listened in on a phone call I was making, and put the rest together from there." He added, in a bit more sullen tone, "And then he apparently decided that he was allowed to pretend to be me whenever he wanted."

Ran slid down to sit properly in her seat again, one hand pressed to her forehead. "An internationally wanted jewel thief knows where you are. A criminal. And he figured it out before I did. This is not right. This is not fair. I need to punch something…"

Shinichi wondered what had Ran the most upset: that Kaitou Kid knew where Shinichi had been hiding, that Kaitou Kid had figured out where Shinichi had been hiding before she did, or that Shinichi himself did not seem to be terribly worried about the fact that Kaitou Kid knew where Shinichi had been hiding.

Even now, as he thought about it, he still wasn't worried. If the thief was going to blow his cover sky high, chances were that he probably would have done so by now. Besides, when one had one's own secret identity and relied on said secret identity for protection, one really didn't have the right to go around blowing the lid off other people's protective secret identities.

…the more Shinichi pondered this, the more he felt like an undercover secret agent.

Shinichi. Kudo Shinichi. Double oh seven certainly fit the age.

Did that mean that Ran was a Bond girl?

He glanced down at himself and his current body and grinned. It was an entertaining thought.

Heiji apparently noticed his expression. "Whatever you're thinking, I don't think I want to know." Ran, meanwhile, seemed to have momentarily forgotten the whole Kaitou Kid affair, and reached up to smack him soundly on the head for openly ogling her body. And then she smacked him on the head again when he protested.

Once they were back on the ground, though, he got his revenge. There was an area of the park with rides intended for younger children. And getting Ran over there was as easy as picking her up and carrying her, ignoring her squawk of protest.

Shinichi and Heiji stood outside the teacup ride and smiled and waved at 'Conan-kun' as he went around and around and around in the teacups, surrounded by a lot of screaming kindergarteners. Ran, for her unwilling part in the matter, glared at them in a manner that indicated death would soon follow. Their deaths, specifically. Painful deaths.

If looks were arrows, both the teenaged detectives would have been pincushions.

**_-o-_**

"I don't really consider myself easy to bribe, but you two are officially off the hook," Ran said, happily slurping at a frozen lemonade. It was a peace offering, extended after she had been freed from the confines of the kiddy rides, horror of horrors.

"What else do we want to go on?" Shinichi asked. He had borrowed Ran's map.

They went on the Mystery Coaster. Hattori stayed firmly on the ground and waited for them by the exit. Fortunately, things this time went off without a hitch, and everyone left the coaster with their heads intact. There were also no mysterious men in black with questionable tastes in hairstyles on the ride. Thumbs up all around.

On their way to the pirate ship, they were accosted by some middle school girls who were fans of Heiji's, wanting autographs. They glared at Shinichi and demanded to know who 'she' was. Ran spoke up from down by their kneecaps and said that Heiji-niichan was helping Ran-neechan babysit today. The girls cooed appropriately at what a nice guy he was. Heiji preened; Shinichi looked faintly ill.

Finally they made it to the pirate ship. Heiji went on the ride with them, and only looked slightly green at it. Apparently he was only affected by roller coasters, a fact that left Shinichi mystified. He vowed to solve that puzzle, preferably in a manner that involved the use of Haibara's laboratory, some chemicals, and many sharp lab tools.

The haunted house would have been entertaining, Ran privately thought, if the two stupid detectives hadn't felt the need to explain how every single bleeping special effect was accomplished. She was somewhat consoled by the fact that she was not the only one who was contemplating adding them to the ghosts in the manor by the end of it all, though.

Instead, she settled for just giving them both a sound smack on the kneecaps and an order to shut up…and then laughed at their expense when a zombie jumped out of a cupboard and they both jumped, yelped, and grabbed onto each other. Ran desperately wished she had a camera.

They hit the Scrambler, which was just plain fun. Ran's only complaint was that when the ride pulled to the side, she tended to get sort of squished between the two teenagers. But it could have been a lot worse than being caught between Hattori Heiji (who was, again, not bad looking) and having herself sort of pressed against her own br—

Never mind.

They went on the bumper cars just for kicks and giggles. Heiji seemed determined to knock Shinichi into the wall as many times as possible, and Ran took advantage of it to sneak up behind them and hit them both. Then they chased her around the floor for the rest of the time. By that time, they were all laughing like idiots, and it was really hard to tell just who the kid in the trio was.

Shinichi still thought it was Hattori.

As they got off that ride and started excitedly discussing the next one, a big drop of water landed on Ran's hand. She glanced up with the intention of telling the boys to be careful and not spit on her when they talked, but then another one hit her while both of them had their mouths closed, and she had to rethink her position on that.

It took a moment for them to realize that it had started raining, and they were out in the open, a fair distance away from the nearest cover. It didn't help any that there was a veritable stampede of people around them, all heading for the same awnings they were.

The rain picked up quickly, and by the time they finally managed to find shelter beneath the awning in front of one of the park's food vendors, it hard erupted into a full-blown storm with torrents of rain pouring down on the park. It almost wasn't even worth getting under the protection of that awning at that point. All three of them were completely drenched.

Shinichi crouched down, sitting on his heels. "Well, this is lovely…" he muttered, running his fingers through Ran's long hair, now wet and quickly tangling beneath his ministrations. Wet clothes didn't feel any better against the skin of a girl's body than they did of a guy. He also officially promised himself that he was never going to think about that again.

Ran, in Conan's body, looked like a wet cat, and was trying to find something dry to use to clean the lenses of the famous glasses. In the end, she just sighed and tucked them into her pocket. "Not like I need them to function," she said before glancing down at herself. "This…" She hesitated, looking for a genteel and tactful way to describe their situation.

"Sucks, Neechan," Heiji said with his usual lack of regard for such uncivilized things as tact; he was busily shaking water off his trademark cap, and he didn't look too terribly pleased with the turn of events. "The word you're looking for is sucks. This sucks."

"Agreed times over nine thousand," Ran admitted.

"…we're doing worn-out internet jokes now?" Heiji asked.

There was a loud rumble overhead.

"Let's just say that was thunder," Heiji said before Shinichi could say a word.

Shinichi gave him a Look, but said nothing on that topic. Instead he straightened up and looked around. "Maybe we should head back to the agency. Change, get some dry clothes, figure out what else we could do for a day." He looked like he wanted to say something else, and even opened his mouth, but then seemed to decide against it and closed his mouth again.

"What is it?" Ran asked.

"Well, I just noticed something odd," Shinichi said. "And I mean 'hole in the fabric of the universe' odd." He tapped his chin. "We've been out for almost an entire day, and there hasn't been a mur—"

"BE QUIET!" Ran kicked him in the shins, not caring that she was bruising herself. "Don't jinx it!"

Shinichi shut up.

When the rain let up a short time later, they left the park with the intention of heading back to the Mouri Detective Agency, possibly by way of the Kudo house to find some clothes for Hattori to borrow. No one really wanted to think too much about how Shinichi and Ran were going to change clothes.

After they were done there, who knew what they would do next? They just had to keep busy until the day came to a close and Ran's wish ended and the world was returned to its rightful state.

And really, how long could a day take?

* * *

**PS.** _Thus far a day has taken…going on four years. Whoops. Anyway, many loves and smooches to **Fyliwion** and **magicbulletgirl** who read this chapter and assured me repeatedly that it was funny enough for the story, because I was quite worried. It's been a really long time and all…also, Heiji not taking to roller coasters was just too fun of an image to ignore._

_The next chapters are fairly clear in my head, and from there it should be a pretty straight run for the finish line. I will not wait a year and a half before updating again. I do promise that much, at least. Thanks for reading, all! Much love!_


	7. Up Above the World You Fly

**AN:** Another update? And it hasn't been a year? Quick, someone call Hell and ask if it's snowing! (Have I used that joke before? I can't remember…) Here is the seventh chapter out of what will probably be ten total. I hope you enjoy it! I don't own Detective Conan.

**Up Above the World You Fly**

And so our heroes continue on their adventure. This makes sense, because a story should usually follow the heroes. If it didn't, it would probably just follow some random guy, and that would not be very interesting. So if you want to read the Adventures of Random Guy, sorry to disappoint you, but you'll have to look elsewhere. We'll be sticking with our heroes. This has been a Public Service Announcement.

The plan had been so simple. Leave Tropical Land. Go to Shinichi's house to find something for Heiji to borrow because while Ran's fashion sense was fairly nice, somehow no one truly thought that there would be anything in her closet that Heiji would actually want to wear. Take things to the Mouri Detective Agency. Change. Find something else to keep them all entertained for a while.

Simple and effective.

Unfortunately, Murphy's Law didn't feel like it had messed with them enough for one day, and so left them a surprise. The first part of the whole plan went along just fine, and Heiji found something in Shinichi's wardrobe that he deemed 'not terrible,' earning himself a very rude hand gesture from the owner of the clothing, but there was a big shock waiting for them when they walked into the upstairs part of the Agency, where Conan and the Mouri family made their home.

Ran stared.

Shinichi stared.

Heiji ate a candy bar, then realized that he should probably also be staring. He didn't like being left out.

The entire place was trashed, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Newspapers, dishes, random things that Ran was sure she had never before seen in their household, all now carpeting the floor of their home. The mess was strewn from the very back corner of the kitchen all the way to the doorway where they now all stood; there was an arc in the mess that had been made by them opening the door to enter, thus pushing a whole lot of garbage away and towards the wall.

And sitting on the floor in the only other vacant spot, right beside the table, was Mouri Kogoro himself. He was plopped there, cross-legged, holding something in his hand, and looking rather glum.

Ran looked at Shinichi.

Shinichi looked at Ran.

Heiji was more distracted by trying to figure out how the chess piece had gotten stuck to the ceiling.

Finally, Shinichi opened his mouth to ask the Scary Question. "D-Dad?" he said, remembering that he was Ran at the moment and thus that made Kogoro her (his?) father, which was easily one of the scariest thoughts Shinichi had entertained in quite some time.

"Hmm?" he grunted.

"What in the world did you do?"

"Made lunch," Kogoro said absently.

Another disbelieving glance was passed between the two swapped teenagers. Heiji had abandoned the chess piece for the moment and was now wondering how in the hell a copy of _Twilight_ had gotten glued to the light fixture like that…or indeed why Mouri Ran had a copy of _Twilight_ in the first place.

(The possibility that it could be anyone else's did not occur to Heiji. This was probably a point in his favor, as asking too many questions might have resulted in an answer that would have made his poor brain explode. Or it might have been exactly what he thought. The world will never know.)

"Okay, Dad," Shinichi went on slowly, suddenly very certain that he was not going to like the answer he would get in response to his next question. "What exactly did you make for lunch?"

Kogoro held up a small white cup. "Instant ramen."

**_-o-_**

After Kogoro had been forcibly removed from the house by virtue of screams, threats, and a few thrown things (and it was to the man's credit that he had managed to make his way out by wading through the mess he had left on the floor), the three teenagers set to the task of cleaning it up. Ran refused to allow her father to try, saying that he would make things even worse.

First they changed clothes, which was an exercise in awkwardness and nervousness and insistence that absolutely no peeking had taken place. Then they set about reordering the living space.

As they dove in, though, Ran was amazed to find things that she was quite sure they did not own buried in the mess. Where in the world had her father found these things? Then she remembered that she had never quite been able to bring herself to get the space under the sink, and so decided that the strange potato-like monster she had found living there could just bloody well stay there.

The Silver Imperium Crystal, however, she was having a much harder time explaining away. And she wasn't even going to try and figure out how the mother loving TARDIS got into the stove. That was just too much for her to handle on top of everything else that day.

To their credit, the boys didn't complain about anything, including having to help clean up the mess. Whether that was out of a genuine good will and compassion, or the fact that they were simply afraid of her, she did not know and she did not care. Help was help.

They managed to make it as fun as could be expected. Shinichi was having fun kicking the non-breakable things towards Heiji so the latter could put them up on the shelf, though that game came perilously close to ending when a book hit Heiji's shin hard enough to bruise.

Ran lectured Shinichi.

And found Heiji an ice pack in the debris.

They then switched to the time-honored tradition of playing basketball with wadded up bits of paper in lieu of a ball, and a garbage can instead of a basket. That game went along fairly well until an errant staple decided to imprint itself in Shinichi's head while he was holding the basket and Heiji was taking the shot. Heiji apparently had not noticed the staple until there was blood running down a face that technically belonged to Ran.

Ran lectured Heiji.

And gave Shinichi a bandage for his forehead.

Then Ran picked up a box that she believed to be a great deal lighter than it actually was, and managed to send herself flying backwards. She crashed into Heiji's knees, which knocked him into Shinichi, sending the both of them crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs. She was not sure if their lips brushed or not; she didn't get to see before they both flew apart, though she personally felt that it was a very pretty mental image.

Shinichi and Heiji lectured Ran.

And neither would look directly at each other.

Then, once the rest of the room was tidied, each of them grabbed a garbage bag and started walking down the stairs to take them to the dumpster. By some miracle (or perhaps an imp of the perverse, or maybe even just good ol' Murphy's Law), all three of the bags managed to split halfway down the stairs, sending a shower of debris down the stairs. It was trash, trash, trash, as far as the eye could see.

They all lectured each other.

And went to find more garbage bags.

All things considered, when Ran had made this little wish, she had not exactly considered…well, she had not really considered that it would even come true in the first place. But on the off-chance that it did, and just so happened to come true in the precise way that it had, spending an hour cleaning up the absolute disaster area her father had made of their living quarters was certainly not how she had envisioned spending that day.

And she still had absolutely no idea what to do with the Shikkon no Tama she had found in the sink, or the Keyblade she had found somehow stashed away in the broom closet.

**_-o-_**

"If Dad ever touches that kitchen again, I'm going to do something to him in his sleep, I swear," Ran murmured as the line moved ahead another person. She shuffled along automatically, still making quiet promises under her breath. "Do such a good job that even you two won't be able to figure it out."

Shinichi glanced warily at Heiji. "You know, if there was anyone who could get away with murder, it would be her. Look at how much time she spends on cases. Look at who she hangs out with! The only people more likely to get away with murder are us."

"If either of us goes crazy, the world is in trouble," Heiji replied. "…you like me, right?"

"When I eventually snap and conquer the world, you will have a place in my government," Shinichi replied airily with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But at the first sign of civil disobedience, you will be charged with treason and put to death."

Heiji laughed. Closer to the ground, Ran was still planning her father's demise. Just in case.

The line inched forward person by person until it was finally their turn to purchase their tickets. They received yet another compliment about what a cute couple they were. Shinichi decided to have fun with it and thanked the lady at the ticket counter before grabbing onto Heiji's arm with a big smile. Heiji did not recover from this enough to react until they were past the concession stand.

Said reaction was not exactly a verbal one, but it made his movie-going companions laugh.

All in all, Shinichi wasn't terribly thrilled about their choice, but it had gotten some wonderful reviews, and Ran really seemed to want to see it. She said Sonoko had absolutely adored it, although Sonoko's taste tended towards the questionable on a good day. Still, he was not completely sure that he'd be able to bring himself to enjoy _MAGIC KAITO THE MOVIE: THE OBLIGATORY CAMEO._

But eh, it was worth a try.

The movie theater was about three-fourths full. Most of the seats were occupied by young women, who were giggling and squealing and in the case of a few sitting near the back, muttering something about plunnies. Whatever those were.

When the movie began, the theater quieted down quickly, and within a few minutes everyone was engrossed in the film. Shinichi found himself watching it rather intently. The story was sort of half-baked, he personally thought, but hey, it was fiction, standard rules did not apply. He was a bit curious about one of the characters: a teenaged detective, blonde, of both Japanese and European descent.

It sounded strangely like someone Shinichi had actually met before.

…eh, it probably wasn't important. Banishing the thought, he went back to the movie.

As the film was nearing its conclusion, Shinichi suddenly felt a weight on his arm. He glanced down, and couldn't keep himself from grinning. "Psst, Hattori," he whispered before moving his head so as to gesture to the seat between them. "Take a look at this…"

Apparently the effects of Ran's new compact body ran deeper than he thought. Small children tended to get tired at odd moments, after all. And Ran was sound asleep, having tilted over sideways far enough for her head to be resting on Shinichi's arm. Which was technically Ran's own arm, he supposed, but when he started thinking about the situation like that, his brain started to hurt.

"Aww, how cute," Heiji half-snickered. "Practicing for the wedding night or what?"

"I think that's a felony," Shinichi replied dryly. "So let's just keep me away from myself, okay?"

"…how do age of consent laws apply in this situation? You're both technically legal."

"We are not having this discussion. That is final."

A pause.

"You're thinking about it right now, aren't you?"

"Hattori, shut up."

**_-o-_**

"That was a good movie," Ran commented, stretching her arms over her head.

"Says the kid who slept through almost the entire thing," Shinichi replied dryly, ignoring the scathing look he got in response. "But yeah, it wasn't bad or anything."

"You know, Shinichi, I bet if we made your story into a book or movie or something, we could make a fortune!" she said with a grin. "The whole Conan thing, I mean! Wouldn't it make for a great plot?"

"Neechan, I hate to break it to you, but—"

"Hattori, be quiet and let her dream—"

"But we're already in a manga, aren't we?"

Before Heiji knew what was happening, both Shinichi and Ran had rushed forward and were physically supporting the fourth wall, which upon Heiji's comment had fractured to the point of starting to collapse in on itself. They were holding it up with all their strength as it loomed in danger of crashing down onto the sidewalk, thereby ending life as they knew it…or at least allowing passersby to see that they had a surprisingly large audience.

Shinichi shot Heiji a glare. "Don't just stand there, you idiot! Find something to fix it! Hurry!"

They managed to repair things in time (where Heiji had pulled that duct tape from, the world was probably better off not knowing) and were on their way, hoping that no one noticed the big gray strips of tape across the sidewalk. They walked quickly; distance was good. Distance was their friend. And Hattori was an idiot, but that was something they all knew already anyway.

There was a loud bang nearby, making all three jump. Heiji and Shinichi glanced off to the side, suspicion written in their eyes. That had almost sounded like a…

Ran spoke up quickly. "Was probably just a truck backfiring or something."

They were nearing the Mouri home once again. The sun was just beginning to make its downward arch across the sky, but it was still a good few hours until nightfall. There was still a fair amount of time left before Ran's wish ended and they switched back, or so they hoped.

Just for a day.

What a day it had turned out to be.

And most amazingly of all, nothing had gone wrong! Well, save for the whole switching thing and Ran finding out about Conan and Shinichi's shopping trip with Sonoko and the children being determined to dump Ran in a mud puddle and Heiji's ditching of Kazuha and the whole amusement park thing and her father's utter lack of respect for the kitchen—

…okay, pretty much everything had gone wrong today, but it didn't seem to matter! Because as far as Ran concerned, the world could go to hell in a handbasket with a pretty pink bow tied on it, and she would be all peaches and cream so long as there wasn't a single—

There was another loud bang, identical to the first one. And a loud scream split the air around them.

Shinichi whipped around.

Heiji whipped around.

Ran whipped around.

A cat peeked out from behind a garbage can across the street and said "LOL WUT?"

Ran's heart sank. She knew that particular scream. That was the 'I just found a body' scream. It tended to symbolize the end of relaxation and enjoyment in her world, and she was bloody well sick of it. But such was the life of a girl who had somehow managed to surround herself on all sides with police and detectives. She could only imagine what it would be like when she inevitably married one.

…and that was a train of thought she was not going to pursue any further.

There wasn't a great deal of time to think it over, really. Shinichi and Heiji were already running towards the sound. Ran sighed and gave chase, still trying to figure out exactly why they felt the need to run at the dead bodies. Most people would run away.

Stupid Shinichi.

Finding the source of the disturbance wasn't that hard. A man had stumbled out of a house half a block from where they had been standing. He was running around and raving and screaming for help, nearly hysterical. "He killed my wife! He murdered my wife! Oh god, I think I killed him!"

"Call the police," Shinichi whispered, but Ran already had a phone in her hand. The boys headed up the stairs, leaving the man curled on his front lawn. Sure enough, there were two bodies on the dining room floor, a man and a woman. Two bloody weapons lay on the floor: a hammer and a gun.

The two stood there, staring at the scene with their usual scrutiny, already absorbing every detail they could. Between what the room itself told them and the histrionics of the man who apparently lived here and who had witnessed or taken part in this, there was no doubt about it at all.

This was a murder scene.

* * *

**PS.** _Figures that the first time I actually attempt to write a murder case it would be in the middle of a bleeping humor fic. We'll see how well I do, though. I have it fairly well planned out, so it'll just be a matter of trying to write it well. Wish me luck!_

_The scene with the fourth wall being duct-taped is one of the first ideas I had for this fic, and yes, there was a cameo by a lolcat. There were also references to Goosebumps, Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, Kingdom Hearts, and Doctor Who (which I have never actually watched, though Torchwood is merrily devouring my soul). I like to pretend I'm funny sometimes, don'tcha know._

_Thanks for reading, all! Much love!_


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